Changing boot device for a QEMU-KVM virtual machine

Solution 1:

If libvirt doesn't reload VM settings on start/stop, virsh edit command may help. And please write entire XML file and libvirt version

Hmm... everything seems OK. Try adding

<boot dev='hd'/>
<boot dev='cdrom'/>
<bootmenu enable='yes'/>

to <os> section and look if cdrom appears in boot menu. Also try removing all <boot> records from <os> and adding

<boot order='1'/>

to <disk> section

Solution 2:

If the VM is down, look for a stored saved image under /var/lib/libvirt/qemu/save - it will keep the old parameters alive, despite changes made via virsh edit. I deleted such image in a similar case where it kept looking for an non-existent network interface (and failing to boot due to this).