virtualbox.org

At first I had problems with installing Windows 95. I got the "standard mode: fault outside of ms-dos extender." error all the time at random while trying to install it. setting the RAM to 12MB fixed that problem. Now I've got another error when trying to boot Win95.
It says "while initializing device ios: windows protection error. you need to restart your computer" I googled it and people have said it's possible to fix this by underclocking the CPU. Now, how do I do that in VB? I can't seem to find any settings for CPU speed at all.
All help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Show us autoexec.bat and config.sys, usually this is a emm386 problem.

Sorry, where do I find them? I'm new to using VB and I've never had such problems before haha.
Thank you for a fast reply.

They're stored in the root directory of your computer (c:\) and are the pre-windows boot sequence

Edit: If you don't know where the files are, you probably don't have a terribly easy way of accessing the hard drive of a dead system.

Try pushing F8 as early on the boot sequence as possible (if the windows logo appears, it's too late). Then choose "command line boot"

once you get to a c:\ prompt, try "type config.sys" and/or "type autoexec.bat". You won't be able to use the clipboard to copy the contents, but there shouldn't be more than a few lines in each one.

"while initializing device ios: windows protection error. you need to restart your computer"

That sounds like the old Windows 95 AMD problem (Microsoft never used the word 'bug', although it undoubtedly is), full details of which can be found here.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192841
Bascially, the problem centred around the AMD K6/2 and Athlon processors and how certain Windows 95 drivers behaved. Although the problem was 'fixed' for Windows 98, I do not know if AMD ever did anything their end. It was certainly still present with the Athlon XP series of processors and could well still be in the current AMd product range. On the above link you will find the download that updates the affected files to fix the problem and instructions on how to install them.

I have an AMD PhenomII processor and a Windows 95 VM . Before installing the update, If I ran the VM with hardware virtualisation disabled the machine booted and ran happily. If I tried with virtualisation enabled I got the IOS error. I have now installed the fix and it boots fine with virtualisation disabled or enabled. Installing the update was not straight forward on my machine. I do not know if its a general problem or specific to my setup, but Windows 95 refused to read the floppy or floppy image I created with the fix. To get around this I simply restarted in DOS mode and copied the disk by hand to the Win95 virtual hard drive, then started Win95 in safe mode and installed the fix from the hard drive without a hitch.

For windows 95 to work in Virtual Box, you have to uncheck the box "Enable VT-x/AMD-V". Otherwise you will get the error mentioned above intermitently.

My Host is an AMD-based laptop, and I was having this. Turned off VT-x/AMD-V and Windows 95 boots fine!

Interestingly, this all seemed related to the IDE driver, as I'd found disabling it meant Windows booted perfectly happily. Good to know anyway!