Or if you used an ISO image file version of the XP disc, the above changes to. How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting. I am like 95% positive i am doing the right thing as per your original instructions. So pointing the VM's CD/DVD to the.iso on the optical disc in.
In a previous, I provided an overview of my experience with installing Windows 95 in a VM. I decided to provide further detail in this post not so much to focus on Windows 95, but as a prelude to investigating how well different virtualisation software handled legacy operating systems. The guest OS I used in these evaluations was Windows 95 OSR2 (also referred to as Windows 95B). I avoided Windows 95 OSR1 (Windows 95A), as FAT32 only first appeared in OSR2.
I also didn’t bother with Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Windows 95C) as it bundled IE4. I decided to skip this complication as it’s possible to install IE5.5, the last version of IE that Windows 95 supported. Under the microscope in this post is VirtualBox version 5.1.22 from Oracle, the latest version available at the time of writing this post. In a future post, I’ll cover VMware Workstation Player.
Time permitting, I may even decide to look at Virtual PC from Microsoft, and possibly even DOSBox. Out-of-scope for this series of evaluations are network operations covering file and print services, and Windows Update. In-scope will be graphics and sound capability and elementary network functionality and internet access i.e. ‘Can I see stuff, even if I can’t readily access it?’ Installation What makes Windows 95 installations different to that of later Windows OSs is that the installation CD (or ISO) is not bootable.
A boot floppy (or image) is also required. VirtualBox handles both optical and floppy devices well. The only curiosity for me, was that VirtualBox assigned the letter R: to the optical drive. The floppy was A: and the target drive for the system was C: as expected.
A mouse click within the VM windows was used to make the guest OS active. Once the guest OS was active, the Right-Ctrl key was used to make the host OS active.
Switching between host and guest systems took a little bit of getting use to. I allow Windows 95 to detect hardware during installation. I also install the IP protocol at this stage. When first booting Windows 95 after initial setup, I’m confronted with the first hurdle to overcome: The solution required Enable VT-x/AMD-V to be unchecked as suggested in this.
As I found out later, the issue stems from a ‘divide by zero’ problem as a result of using a modern day processor for the host system. Refer to this Microsoft for an explanation. Initial Impressions After finalising setup and booting into Windows, the first thing that I noticed was sound.
I also noticed that I have network visibility. However, I noticed that Windows 95 only runs in 640 x 480 resolution and 16 colours.
Attempting to install VirtuaBox Guest Additions throws up the following dialoge box: This VirtualBox states that ‘Windows 9x is not officially supported by VirtualBox team, which means, that it lacks Guest VM Additions, and it runs slowly, because VirtualBox is not optimized to run Win 9x.’ The view of Device Manager below provides additional clues to what we’re observing. Note that the display is standard VGA and there are some unknown devices. At this stage, also note that the VM network adapter has been identified as an AMD PCNET Family Ethernet Adapter (PCI&ISA). Display The also sheds light on display limitations within VirtualBox for Windows 95 and recommends the use of a SciTech Display Doctor driver to address the limitations. Internet Explorer (IE) IE3 is bundled with Windows 95 OSR2. Being non-standard and out-of-date, it complained when attempting to display web pages. As you can see from the image below, web pages look pretty grim on IE3.
IE5.5 SP2 is the highest version of IE that is compatible with Windows 95. While there are still some problems, Web pages look a lot better under IE5.5. A Tools menu item and Windows Update (WU) has been added to the IE5.5 menu. This did not exist in IE3. Installaing IE5.5 required me to create an ISO image to deliver it via the optical device. Windows Update Sadly, I haven’t been able to get WU working in Windows 95. A search on the internet suggests that numerous updates are available.
However, there isn’t one definitive source that says ‘I’ve got it all!’. Over time, I may install some of the more significant patches, but, as this is not the focus of this post, that’s going to have to wait for a more opportune time. Summary Words that describe my experience in key areas in getting Oracle VirtualBox to create a Windows 95 VM:. Installation – A little tricky. Sound – Trivial. Display – Tricky.
Network – Trivial. Edit: Check out these postings as well for other relevant topics. References.
Avoid 100% CPU load Win9x is using an idle loop instead of HLT: the loop lets the host CPU running the Win9x virtual machine consume 100% all the time. This only applies to DOS and DOS based Win (3.x, 95/98/ME) - NT based Windoze and all other operating systems are not affected Install rain, waterfall or cpuidle in the Win9x guest - my preference is rain as it only does what is needed -replace the idle loop with HLT execution- and nothing more here is a link explaining something about, related to real hardware d/l rain from here: Volunteer Posts: 1699 Joined: 13. Sep 2008, 02:18. I experience a problem where the display is rendered unreadable (while using the linked video drivers.
Yes the universal ones, switching between the different drivers in that package doesn't help). The only workaround I have is to use 256 colors, which still causes the display to stretch but it is possible to still see enough to change the screen resolution back to something sane. The glitch appears to occur whenever a console program runs, regardless of whether the console window is visible or not. In the second screenshot you can see the.NET framework setup causes it even though no visible windows appear (but it does invoke the CLI ngen.exe tool as part of setup).
Opening command.com causes it to happen immediately. Visual corruption in 32-bit graphics mode - Visual corruption in 256 color mode Hopefully this workaround (use 256 colors) will help some people for the short term, but it would be nice if someone could figure out a better solution. Edit: Don't change the screen res back while a console app is running (even/especially with no window) because the app will hang. Volunteer Posts: 129 Joined: 16.
Sep 2008, 23:22 Location: Internet Primary OS: MS Windows 7 VBox Version: PUEL Guest OSses: Ubuntu, Chromium OS, Windows. Using 16bit mode doesn't work for me either. What does work, however, is switching to full screen mode with Alt+Return and then switching back to windowed mode again - afterwards the DOS box works just fine in windowed mode. As a workaround for console apps that do not run long enough to press Alt+Return twice I created a shortcut to 'command.com /k exit', specified in the properties that it should run in full screen mode and put the shortcut at the top of the start menu. Now I can press 'Windows key' - 'Down' - 'Return' to make the screen readable again (ugly, but better than nothing ).
Posts: 0 Joined: 4. Oct 2008, 19:11. Fixedwheel wrote: avoid 100% CPU load Win9x is using an idle loop instead of HLT: the loop lets the host CPU running the Win9x virtual machine consume 100% all the time. This only applies to DOS and DOS based Win (3.x, 95/98/ME) - NT based Windoze and all other operating systems are not affected Install rain, waterfall or cpuidle in the Win9x guest - my preference is rain as it only does what is needed -replace the idle loop with HLT execution- and nothing more here is a link explaining something about, related to real hardware d/l rain from here: I was just curious about a thing: the switches for Rain 2.0 apply to very old CPU types.
Where can we find info about newer CPUs? (i'm trying VBox on AMD Turion 64 X2, and eventually AMD Athlon 64 X2.) Posts: 4 Joined: 25. Sep 2008, 20:51.
(Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy host, Windows95 guest) Getting data to and from the guest. This is an issue for me as I do not have a physical floppy drive on the machine and W95 does not support writing to CD (at least, mine doesn't) Creating a virtual CD file as mentioned above is good for larger files (remember I am talking Windows 95 here!) being passed from host to guest, although it is a lot more awkward than just drag and drop. But for passing files (up to 1.4Mb) in both directions you can use a virtual floppy disk. On the Ubuntu host, create an empty virtual floppy as follows. Code: sudo dd bs=512 count=2880 if=/dev/zero of=myfloppy.img sudo mkfs msdos myfloppy.img (replacing myfloppy.img with a name of your choice - including a path if need be) One-off, create a mount point on the host for the floppy. This could be anywhere, but I think it makes sense to put it in /media.
The name myflop is arbitrary. Code: sudo mkdir /media/myflop When you want to access the floppy on the host, it must be mounted. Code: sudo losetup /dev/loop0 myfloppy.img sudo mount -t msdos /dev/loop0 /media/myflop again, with the appropriate substitution for myfloppy.img. It can now be accessed (read/write), via /media/myflop just like any other folder on the system. This works as root (using sudo) - I am not sure which bits root access is essential for. When finished with, unmount it Code: sudo umount /media/myflop sudo losetup -d /dev/loop0 My experience on the Windows95 guest is not so easy and I don't know why - (NB that isn't a request for help!).
When I have VirtualBox (2.2.2) running and Mount the floppy image the A: drive is never ready in Windows95. However, if I reboot the VM in MS-DOS mode I can copy files to and from the floppy image with no difficulty. Posts: 1 Joined: 24. May 2009, 20:48 Primary OS: Ubuntu 8.04 VBox Version: PUEL Guest OSses: Windows95. I know that this is a mite off-topic and odd, but I figured out that only DOS-based versions of Windows are unsupported(not just 9x), and that I was able to successfully install Windows NT 4.0(1996 release, just so you know) and the guest additions without problem. Windows 98 is obviously unsupported, and old, but 4.0 came first, and it runs fine. I know this is stupid, but it's just an FYI.
Posts: 16 Joined: 25. Apr 2009, 15:59 Primary OS: MS Windows Vista VBox Version: OSE self-compiled Guest OSses: XP, Ubuntu. I just want to warn you that the the link to the VBEMP x86 Project video drivers that are hosted on Yahoo! Geocities is going to be shut down on the 26th of October 2009, meaning that people who want to get the generic video drivers for Windows 9x/Me will no longer be able to do so after that date. The correct link to the VBEMP x86 Project homepage is right on this page just incase Yahoo! Geocities shuts down this fall: You might want to consider updating the topic soon. Anyways, I might want to try out running Windows 95 guest in VirtualBox once more and I'll post the results if you don't mind.
Volunteer Posts: 150 Joined: 12. Aug 2008, 04:22 Primary OS: MS Windows 2000 VBox Version: PUEL Guest OSses: None.