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I love my vintage computers, especially my Pentium Pro Win95 machine for 95/DOS games, but it isn't exactly portable. I would like to run a Win95 VM in VirtualBox, but trying to install from my original Win95 CD-ROM has not worked.
Installing from various versions of ISOs has not worked either. Regardless of the method I use to install, I either get a ton of missing DLL errors or it doesn't boot at all after install.
Has anyone managed to get Windows 95 working in a VM? I am really not fond of DOSbox or even an MS-DOS VM, and many of my games won't run on DOS alone anyway. I'd love to play Civilization II on my laptop. I love the HTML4 styling of this site. Downloading now. I hope it works. I wish the Guest Additions were open source, so they could possibly be backported.
I'm confident it will run fast enough for my needs, though. At one point I kept an XP VM for the same purpose, but my laptop's HDD died and I had to replace it with a smaller, slower one and the VM was taking up far too much space. Win95 should be plenty small enough. Thanks for the CivII link, I will definitely try that if the VM doesn't work out. I still have other Win95 games I'd like to see running, such as SimAnt and SimTower. I also have a burning nostalgia for Win95, since my first computer (that was really mine) was a Win95 Toshiba TecraCDT. I threw it away, but now I'd pay almost anything to have it back.
Get VMware player (Windows)/fusion (Mac)! I just started using it and it's been great for playing older games. Also, get a Win95 image off of WinWorldPC. Most likely they have a pre made machine to use in VMware.
Just a side note, if the games require DirextX, it will not work in any 9x OS, including ME, as well as any NT OS pre-2000. You need at least 2000 or XP to get them working with DirectX and everything. If you don't need DirectX, then any 9x or pre-2000 NT OS will do just fine;).
Thanks for info Frodo. So I've installed WinImage and created a floppy disk image (.vfd) which is selected for Floppy Device 0: I've also selected IDE Secondary Master: CD/DVD Host Drive 'E:' as the source for my Windows 95 CD.
When I run VM the disk is formatted by WinImage. However, I get the following message: No Systemdisk. Booting from harddisk. Cannot load from harddisk Insert Systemdisk and press any key. I've tried re-inserting the Windows 95 cd and pressing a key but am left with the same message.
I'm obviously missing a step here. Thanks for your help.
Posts: 6 Joined: 3. Jun 2015, 00:21. I've created an image file (.ima) directly from my floppy disk on my old computer. I had to guess a bit as to how to do it, couldn't find any detailed help. The steps I took were: 1. File - New 2. Image - Inject a folder 3.
Selected floppy disk - Saved As.ima file. Copied ima file to my new computer 5. In VirtualBox I have created a virtual disk 6. Settings - Storage Controller: IDE - Windows 95.vdi and Host Drive 'E:' (my cd rom drive) Controller: Floppy - Win95BootDisk.IMA (the.ima file on my new computer hard drive) 7. Settings - System - I have Floppy checked as first boot order, CD/DVD checked as second and Hard Disk as third When I click Start I still get the same message shown in my previous post. Any help appreciated Posts: 6 Joined: 3. Jun 2015, 00:21.
Your floppy disk image file must be a true raw image. There are some image file types that may include extra data along with the image itself, and these will fail in these contexts. Use a.img file, and check its file size. It must be exactly 1,474,560 bytes - anything else and it is not a true image. (I don't know WinImage, so I can't tell you how to use it.) If you cannot create one easily, there are many copies available on the web - just Google something sensible. Since you actually have the CD, which includes the disk image within itself (though you can't get at it yet) you won't be breaching any copyright. A few things to note with running Windows 95 in VirtualBox:.
There are two different versions of Windows 95. (Actually there are more than two, but there are two principal ones.) There is the original and there is the OSR2 (OEM) version. Each has its own start-up floppy. If you are using the original, then it will only use FAT16, which means you need to reduce the hard disk size to no more than 512Mb before starting - default is 2Gb.
![Download windows 95 virtualbox image downloads Download windows 95 virtualbox image downloads](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125464467/182137823.png)
If you have OSR2, then you can use a larger hard disk, provided you select to use 'large disk support' (which is not the default) when running FDISK. It runs more reliably with VT-x turned off, in my esperience. The 'Bear Windows' video driver, though designed for Win 98, will work with Win 95 too and give a variety of screen sizes and colour depths. Posts: 291 Joined: 25. Aug 2011, 19:17 Primary OS: MS Windows 10 VBox Version: PUEL Guest OSses: MS Windows (several versions); DOS. Thanks for info.
I've checked my image file and it is exactly 1,474,560 bytes. My Windows 95 CD is dated August 1996 so I assume it's not the original FAT 16 version.
Also, a setup.txt file makes reference to not using a previous setup floppy as it would be FAT 16 and not work. I have a question on boot order. Since my image files were from a floppy I've assumed my first boot order should be a floppy drive even though the image files are actually on my hard drive, i.e. VB still regards the image files as being on a floppy disk.
Is this correct. Thanks, Posts: 6 Joined: 3. Jun 2015, 00:21. TedN wrote:I have a question on boot order.
Since my image files were from a floppy I've assumed my first boot order should be a floppy drive even though the image files are actually on my hard drive, i.e. VB still regards the image files as being on a floppy disk. Is this correct. It doesn't matter where the image files are, from the guest's perspective you have a floppy disk, a hard disk, and a CD-ROM (probably), even though from your's host's point of view these are all files on the hard disk. So as with a physical Win 95 machine you need to have the floppy as the first in the boot sequence, then once the main system has been loaded onto the hard disk 'remove' the floppy image. It still sounds like there must be something wrong with your floppy disk image.
BTW, once you have got the floppy to boot, don't try to install Windows 95 from 'Host drive E:'. Make a.iso image of the CD and use that instead.
Indeed, with Windows 95 I find it best, once you have partitioned and formatted the virtual hard disk, to create a directory on it called WIN95, copy all files from the WIN95 directory on the (virtual) CD to this hard disk directory, and run SETUP.EXE from there. As michaln has pointed out, Windows 95 is buggy.
It will often freeze on shutdown, or fail to boot properly. (For some reason I have never worked out, if it freezes in the middle of the boot sequence, it can sometimes be persuaded to restart by moving the mouse pointer round and round in circles. Sometimes you have to do this through most of the boot sequence.) All in all, it is not the easiest system to get working properly in VirtualBox. Posts: 291 Joined: 25. Aug 2011, 19:17 Primary OS: MS Windows 10 VBox Version: PUEL Guest OSses: MS Windows (several versions); DOS. TedN wrote:One question: is there any way to change the resolution.
It seems to be stuck on 640 x 480. I've tried enabling Video Capture and making changes there but nothing happens. I can make the Windows 98 screen larger but the resolution is too low. You need a VESA driver. There is one produced by 'Bear Windows' which I have used for some time, and which is referred to in the tutorials. The most recent (2014) version does the job well (apart from DOS command-line boxes). This gives up to 32-bit colour with screen sizes up to 1600x1200px.
(It also speeds up the operation of Windows 98 considerably.) However, the tutorials refer to a website that no longer exists. (It might come back; who knows?) At the moment the driver is available from.
(In the table click on one of the '?' links in the top row.
These are mirrors hosting the driver, except that the first one appears to be dead.) Once you have got this going then, providing you are using 98SE, there are a number of other enhancements you can make to the installation for ease of use. You don't have Guest Additions, but you can set up mouse integration in a way that is almost as good. You can also install a USB stick and use it to transfer files between host and guest, if you don't want to go to the trouble of setting up a network (though the latter isn't difficult either). Posts: 291 Joined: 25.
Aug 2011, 19:17 Primary OS: MS Windows 10 VBox Version: PUEL Guest OSses: MS Windows (several versions); DOS.