kvm-guest-drivers-windows: cannot boot windows 7 with qxl drivers

I have a vanilla windows 7 from modern.ie (apparently “version 20150916”) and once I install the QXL driver from virtio-win-0.1.141.iso (43aefa812c37342cfefc48ec0dd7f1e56a930fcd) the machine doesn’t boot anymore. The situation doesn’t change if I install all the available Windows updates.

STOP 0x0000007F (0x0000000D, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)

According to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/bug-check-0x7f--unexpected-kernel-mode-trap it indicates a “Bug Check 0x7F: UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP” with “0x0000000D – An exception not covered by some other exception; a protection fault that pertains to access violations for applications”.

Once I change the video mode from QXL to, say, virtio, I can boot.

I thus suspect the QXL driver to be the cuprit. Interestingly, using the “Windows guest tools - spice-guest-tools” from https://www.spice-space.org/download.html seems to work better. But it’s unfortunate to download the stuff from there, because it requires a network connection. And Windows does not have virtio network drivers by default.