ABANDONED: Win2K Guest cant find DLL on Office97 Install CD

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

I set up a WIN2K guest on Linux Mint 17 (on thinkpad desktop)

When I try to install Office97 into the guest, it errors out because it can't find this DLL ...

wmsset32.dll

However, if I read the install CD as media, in Linux or using the WIN2K Guest, they both show the DLL right where it should be, where the error code claims it can't find it. It's a genuine Office97 CD (not a sleazy pirate disk) that has previously been installed on my Windows machine.

Any way to force it to find the DLL?

[dlharper]

This seems to be a Windows problem (perhaps a Registry error) rather than a result of using a virtual machine. Try Googling "wmsset32.dll errors" and lots of pages come up. Some of them are likely to give you an answer.

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

As I said, "However, if I read the install CD as media, in Linux or using the WIN2K Guest, they both show the DLL right where it should be, where the error code claims it can't find it."

It's looking for it on the CD, which has been previously successfully installed on Windows, and the CD contains that DLL exactly where the error message says it can't find it.

Is there a trick to installing from CDs into the Virtual Machine? Other than loading it and letting AutoRun do its thing?

[dlharper]

I am sorry, but this does not appear to be anything to do with the machine being virtual.

Read some of the explanations on the Web of why the error occurs. It is a known error, and can be caused by a number of issues. None of them are anything to do with VirtualBox

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

I ran through the usual registry fixes - uninstalling and re-installing, and then loaded in a fresh copy of the DLL into the system directory, made sure the DLL was in the correct place in the system directory ... it still can't find the file on the CD for installation, although if you look at the CD with a file manager it is there. It can't be replaced, because it's a CD.

Because the CD has successfully installed on Windows and in a VMWare virtual machine, I tend to think it's OK and that there's a quirk with the VirtualBox environment.

I will go back to VMWare rather than spend any more time on the issue.