How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox

Posted : admin On 26.12.2020
How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox 8,5/10 2376 votes
Since this is now became a common request by many, I decided to write a tutorial about Windows 9x (95/98/98SE/Me) usage on VirtualBox.
  1. How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox Easy
  2. How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox
  3. How To Install Windows 95 On Oracle Virtualbox
  4. How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox
  5. How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox Without Disk

Power up your Windows 95 guest and install Windows File Sharing. Enable/install samba on your host and create a share. Edit the samba config to enable SMBv1, while being aware to make it listen only on the private 'host-only' VirtualBox network. Then you should be able to see your host in the 'Browse' section of the Windows 95 guest network. If you name it “Windows 95”, VirtualBox will automatically choose the correct Windows version. Choose how much RAM you want to expose to your virtual machine. VirtualBox recommends 64 MB, while official Microsoft blog The Old New Thing claims that Windows 95 won’t boot if it has more than around 480 MB of memory.


Forenote: 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.
1. Installation - I won't cover here in detail, except few points.
Most CD-ROMs available for Windows 95/98 are not bootable, which means, that you must boot from DOS floppy, install DOS first and only then install Windows 95/98.
*It does require DOS skills*
Official bootable CD media is starting from 98SE. So if you're newbie, you should use Windows 98 SE bootable CD.
Additionally I strongly suggest to limit system RAM to 512 MB for those OSes. Otherwise it will crash. (There are workarounds, that allow Win 9x run on modern physical systems, but I won't go into detail here)
In some cases enabling or disabling AMD-V/VT-x can help you install the O.S.
For this tutorial, I presume, that you are able to install the OS.
Installing with ACPI:
(contributed by Richard_S)
Contrary to what you may have read here in some of the other VirtualBox Win98 threads, this is NOT because Win98se is a poorly written piece of antiquated crap that doesn't even know how to properly handle CPU IDLE.
Back when a lot of todays young Linux geeks were still pooping their dipiys, Win98 was already supporting ACPI functions to create greener PCs and help keep laptops from running down their batteries in 10 minutes (which is exactly what DID happen to me the first time I installed Linux on a laptop that was working FINE in Win98).
So, long story short, there is NOTHING really wrong with Win98, the problem is that VirtualBox's emulated BIOS doesn't fully match up with what Win98 expects a real ACPI BIOS to look like, so by default Win98 will not install ACPI support (and unfortunately, the older APM support doesn't handle CPU IDLE, so we get problems).
The solution is to FORCE ACPI support to be installed, by using the
/p j
command line switch when running the setup program that installs Win98.

How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox Easy

This means that you can't just jam the virtual CD into the virtual CD drive and let 'autorun' take care of everything.
The best way to handle this is to simply move the Win98 install folder from the Windows 98 SE CD onto your virtual C: drive in VirtualBox, then change directory to that folder in a DOS prompt and run the setup program manually:
setup /p j
This will force ACPI power management (and the associated CPU IDLE functions) to be installed, and your Win98 virtual machine will consume no more system resources when running than a similar XP or Linux virtual machine.
2. Sound /Audio Integration.
In VirtualBox, you must enable Sound, and use 'Sound Blaster 16'.
It is available since VBox 1.6.0.
The procedure for installation is rather simple:
NOTE: The procedure below is only needed if you switch from AC'97 to SB16.
It is not needed, if you create new VM with SB16, then install Win98 on it.
2.1. Delete your sound card device and all unknown devices from 'Device Manager'.
2.2 Add New Hardware (from Control Panel).
Code: Select allExpand viewCollapse view
[img]http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/2780/win98soundscreenshot01xg6.png[/img]

win98soundscreenshot01xg6.png (44.95 KiB) Viewed 796607 times

Code: Select allExpand viewCollapse view
[img]http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/3426/win98soundscreenshot02sd3.png[/img]

win98soundscreenshot02sd3.png (39.97 KiB) Viewed 796607 times

2.3 Select 'no, device is not listed in the list'.
Code: Select allExpand viewCollapse view
[img]http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/7972/win98soundscreenshot03so7.png[/img]

win98soundscreenshot03so7.png (40.95 KiB) Viewed 796607 times

2.4 Let Windows search for non-plug'n'play devices.
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[img]http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/1111/win98soundscreenshot04gd2.png[/img]

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2.5 It will manually detect non-plug-n-play devices. Click on 'Details' to show them.
Code: Select allExpand viewCollapse view
[img]http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/9726/win98soundscreenshot05yx4.png[/img]

2.6. It will find 'Soundblaster 16 or AWE 32 or compatible'.
Code: Select allExpand viewCollapse view
[img]http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/2001/win98soundscreenshot06me3.png[/img]

win98soundscreenshot06me3.png (39.92 KiB) Viewed 796607 times

2.7. Restart the VM.
3. Video driver integration.
By default Windows 98 will run only in 640x480 resolution, 16-colors.
Performance Note: VirtualBox is not optimized for 16-colors (4-bit) emulation. It works very slow this way.
Having 32-bit True Color driver makes Win98 VMs run on VirtualBox *much* faster.

If you want True color or high resolution, you need to download special drivers.
3.1. bearwindows driver (unstable)
http://bearwindows.zcm.com.au/
NOTE: You must install 'Universal version' (2nd link), as the 'VirtualBox' version is known to have problems.
WARNING: This driver is buggy, and many Windows fonts do not render correctly with it. Not recommended.
3.2. SciTech Display Doctor (recommended)
The second option is to get the SciTech Display Doctor version 7 beta driver (12 MB) -
(contributed by Richard_S)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/226caou8x0jf8 .. ctor-7.iso
-or-
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BycgkM .. UhnWGRycVE
The driver is a high quality commercial grade video driver (even includes some software emulated Open GL 3D support), and it does include an exe installer program.
Despite having an installer, the SciTech Display Doctor is a little tricky to get going. After the program launches, you have to find the little round radio button link to click to 'enable' the new driver (otherwise you still have VGA). Even then, you can't select any higher resolution modes until you ditch the 'default monitor' and select one of the 'Super VGA' types.
After fiddling around with the above changes and rebooting several times you should be able to select 800x600 or 1024x768 (or higher) resolutions with 32 bit color depth. (setting 32 bit color mode optimizes the interface with Virtualbox and really speeds things up)
4. Network
Easiest thing, is to setup VirtualBox to NAT, and AMD PCnet-II network chip. It will be auto-detected by Win 9x.
5. Mouse
(contributed by stefan.becker)

How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox


VirtualBox 4.1 provides for Windows-98-compatible USB tablet device.
Enable USB Tablet: VM->Settings->System->Enable Absolute pointing device
then do: (enable Windows-98 mode)
VBoxManage setextradata 'VM name' 'VBoxInternal/USB/HidMouse/0/Config/CoordShift' 0
docs: '12.3.8 USB tablet coordinates .. in Windows 98 guests'
6. Shared Folders
Since VirtualBox shared folders won't work, there are other ways, such as SMB/Windows File Sharing. Recommended for Windows hosts.
(Tested with VBox 2.1.2.-- and was successful with 'bridged' network. I had no success with NAT.)
WARNING: I admit that with VirtualBox the network is very unstable, presumably due to very slow performance of Win 9x guests under VBox.

How To Install Windows 95 On Oracle Virtualbox


For Unix hosts, WinSCP is recommended.
Another way of read-only file sharing is to create a virtual CD-ROM *.iso file on the host and insert it into the guest VM.
7. Clipboard Host<=>Guest
(contributed by stefan.becker)
Clipboard integrated in VirtualBox only works with the Guest Additions, so not for Windows9x. But there is another solution: Clipboard over TCP/IP.
A Solution tested successfull with Linux Host is ShareClip: http://homepage.mac.com/bnej/shareclip/
-Technologov
Written on 2.9.2008, updated on 18.07.2011.
Please discuss this tutorial here
This topic is only for additions to this tutorial. Do not ask questions about how to get something working. Use a separate topic for that.

This is a step by step guide for installing Windows 95 in VirtualBox.

Requirements:

  • A working installation of VirtualBox. You can download and install it for free from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
  • A Windows 95 Operating System CD with a valid license key
  • A Windows 95 Bootdisk. You can download it from here: https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/95.html
  • SciTech Display Doctor v7.0 beta which you can download from here: https://scitechdd.wordpress.com/

Procedure:

A. Creating our Windows 95 Virtual Machine

Step 1: Open VirtualBox and create a new machine by navigatomg to Machine and selecting the ‘New’ Option.

Step 2: Type in a name for your VirtualMachine, select a location for the machine files, select ‘Microsoft Windows’ as the type of the machine and Windows 95 as the version from the drop-down lista dn click on Next.

Step 3: Select the amount of memory (RAM) available for the machine and click on Next. This can be anywhere from 8MB RAM to 512 RAM. The recommended memory size is 64MB.

Step 4: Create a virtual hard disk for Windows 95. You can selecet VDI (VirtualBox Type), dynamically alocated (hard disk image will grow in size only when needed) and a 2GB filesize which is the maximum that Windows 95 will support.

Step 5: The machine is now ready but we will need to mount the Windows 95 installation CD-ROM and the Windows 95 bootdisk in order to be able to start the machine and proceed with the installation. In order to mount the media, right-click on the machine and select ‘Settings’ and navigate to the ‘Storage’ settings

Step 6: From the Storage settings mount the Windows 95 bootdisk on the Floppy Drive and the Windows 95 Operating System CD-ROM or image to the CD-ROM drive and select OK.

B. Formatting the Hard Disk and copying the installation files

Step 7: We are now ready to start our machine by either double clicking on it, or selecting it and choosing the Start option. You will be greeted with a black DOS terminal screen waiting for your input. Do not freak out. There are a number of things we will need to do before we install Windows 95.

Step 8: We need to configure our hard-disk using fdisk in order to be able to install Windows 95. Type the ‘fdisk’ command (without the quotes) and hit Enter. From FDisk select the 1st option, to Create DOS partition by typing 1 and clicking ‘Enter’.

Select ‘1’ again to create a Primary DOS partition

And then select ‘Y’ (Yes) to utilize the maximum available size of our hard disk for this partition. If all goes well a message will appear telling you to restart your machine before using the partition.

Step 9: Now in order restart our machine we need to select the ‘Reset’ option from the Machine Dropdown Toolbar.

Step 10: Before proceeding with the Windows 95 installation we need to format our newly created partition, create a directory for the Windows 95 setup files, copy them over from the CD and then run the setup executable file.

In order to do that we are going to run a few DOS commands one by one starting with ‘format c:’ and pressing Enter. Select ‘Y’ to proceed and leave blank the volume label.

Now to copy the Windows 95 setup files we need to type the following commands.

Select the C: drive where Windows 95 will be installed: C: (press enter)

Create a new directory for the setup files: mkdir WIN95 (press enter)

Copy over the Windows 95 Setup files from the installation CD to the C drive: copy R:WIN95*.* C:WIN95 (press enter)

Once the copying finishes we will enter the WIN95 directory: CD WIN95 (press enter)

And run the installation: SETUP.EXE (press enter) and then press enter again to start the process.

C. Installing Windows

How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox

Step 11: We are now on our way to installing our operation system. All we need to do is follow the onscreen instructions to proceed and finalise the installation process.

Press the ‘Continue’ button to start the setup process.

Accept the Microsoft Software License Agreement by clicking ‘Yes’.

Proceed with the first step which will collect information regarding your system by pressing ‘Next’.

Select the default Windows Setup directory and click ‘Next’.

For a ‘Typical’ Windows 95 setup we can use the ‘Typical’ selected option and click on ‘Next’.

Type in your product identification code before proceeding to the next step.

Type in your Name and Company name (if any) and proceed to the next step.

Make sure to select both the ‘Network Adapter’ and ‘Sound, Midi, or Video Capture Card’ options in order for Windows to install them and proceed to the next step.

The setup will spend a few minutes analyzing your computer before proceeding with the next step.

Once the analysis is done, the setup will ask if you would like to install three additional Windows tools; Microsoft Network, Microsoft Mail and Microsoft Fax. We can safely ignore these and proceed with the next step.

Afterwards the installation will prompt you if you would like to install the most common Windows Components or if you would like to choose the components to install. We can leave the recommended option selected and proceed to the next step.

In order to identify your computer on the nextwork you can type a computer name, a workgroup name and a computer description before proceeding. You can type anything for these before proceeding.

The setup can also create a startup disk for you in case there are issues when we start up Windows. No need to create this at this stage. We can proceed with the next step.

Now we are ready to begin copying the Windows 95 files to our hard drive.

The installation process will begin and inform you once its done. Given that we have much faster hard drives these days and have supplied amble RAM to our machine this would only take a few minutes.

Once the process is done click on Finish to finish with the setup.

If you recall we still have our Windows 95 bootdisk mounted on our floppy drive. In order to avoid booting back into the initial Dos Prompt we will need to remove the floppy disk by selecting the remove disk option from the Devices toolbar.

The virtual machine will then restart and boot into Windows 95 where it will prompt you to create a Username and Password for your machine.

Before completing the setup process it will request you to select the correct timezone and then setup a Printer for the machine.

Once you select the timezone you can simply cancel the Add Printer Wizard.

The installation will then perform one final restart and boot you into your fresh Windows 95 installation. Congratulations for making it this far.

D. Configuring Windows

Our Windows 95 installation is ready and we can use normally, however if you dive into the display settings you will notice that the color palette is set at 16 colors and the resolution is stuck at 620 x 480 pixels. If we intend to use our Windows installation for applications and games we will need to install the necessary graphics drivers to fix this.

SciTech Display Doctor is a generic display driver for Windows 95 which is supported by VirtualBox and allows you to run Windows 95 with 32-bit colors and 1600×1200 resolution. Download game nova 3 pc.

Step 12: Mount the downloaded SciTech Display Doctor cd-rom image and install it from Windows 95. Follow the installation instructions and then continue to restart the machine. When SciTech closed down they released free registration numbers for their then-current software, the beta application was not included but you can use the registration information provided on the SciTech download website to register the application.

Step 13: In order to select the installed driver we need to Right Click on the desktop and select the ‘Properties’ option to open the Display Properties, go to the Settings Tab and click on the ‘Change Display Type’ option.

How To Install Windows 95 In Virtualbox Without Disk

Step 14: From here we will need to change the Adapter Type to ‘SciTech Display Doctor 7.0’ and the Monitor Type to ‘Super VGA 1600×1200’.

When you select the Adapter Type it will request the SciTech Display drivers. You can find these in C:Program FilesSciTechDisk

Proceed with a Windows restart. If at any point Windows is stuck restarting you can proceed to restart the machine from the VirtualBox toolbar as we did earlier.

Once your machine is restarted you will be able to Right Click on the desktop and select the ‘Properties’ option to open the Display Properties and select the 32bit color depth and change the resolution (Desktop Area) of your Windows95.

Congratulations your Windows 95 installtion is now ready.

E. Additional Information

Remove Network Password Prompt

You can remove the Network Password Prompt when logging into Windows by navigating to Control Panel -> Network and selecting the ‘Windows Logon’ option from the ‘Primary Network Logon’ dropdown box.

Stop SciTech Display Doctor from opening on start-up

To stop SciTech Display Doctor from opening up everytime you open Windows, open regedit from the Start->Run Menu, navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun

and delete the registry entry

“Check for SDD updates”=”C:Program FilesSciTech Display Doctorsddboot.exe”