Difficulty installing Win98 guest.

[Pedro Z]

Host: Win 7 Pro/32
VB: 5.2.42
Guest: Win98SE

I have a Win98SE box supporting legacy apps and hardware that simply can't be ported elsewhere (NOT games!), and the box will die on me one day so I see virtualisation as a pre-emptive solution (medium term at least). Win7P/32 box was available to play on.

Set up yesterday roughly following the "Windows 98SE step by step" guide, figuring any stuff-ups would be part of the learning curve, and the whole thing could be deleted and retried. Established the guest OS in the VM box but had issues with mouse and video. Tried SDD and it recommended 0x0 optimum resolution. Deleted the VM and uninstalled the VM Manager.

Today I went assiduously following Kurt's guide. What I found was some config settings appeared to have survived the Uninstall process, and were pre-filled to my previous values. The significance of that became evident when I reached the Storage section - no way could I get the optical drive discovered/reported/listed. Shrug, move forward anyway.

Issued the suggested "command". Then the "Start Windows 98 Setup and configure the hard drive (enable large disk support)" step - no way could the drive be formatted or anything. Visible and reported in "Storage", but impassable/impossible.

Delete VM, uninstall VM Manager, rinse and repeat. Groundhog day indeed. Clearly (to me) some ghost from yesterday's "nearly there" setup is causing the difference/difficulty today. Any experiences like that, and constructive suggestions?

[Kurt_Aust]

Host: Win 7 Pro/32
VB: 5.2.42
Guest: Win98SE

I have a Win98SE box supporting legacy apps and hardware that simply can't be ported elsewhere (NOT games!), and the box will die on me one day so I see virtualisation as a pre-emptive solution (medium term at least). Win7P/32 box was available to play on.

Set up yesterday roughly following the "Windows 98SE step by step" guide, figuring any stuff-ups would be part of the learning curve, and the whole thing could be deleted and retried. Established the guest OS in the VM box but had issues with mouse and video. Tried SDD and it recommended 0x0 optimum resolution. Deleted the VM and uninstalled the VM Manager.

Don't use their "optimal" resolution (probably says 0x0 because SDD doesn't recognise the VirtualBox graphics adapter), use one of the suggested resolutions, start with 1024x768.

Today I went assiduously following Kurt's guide. What I found was some config settings appeared to have survived the Uninstall process, and were pre-filled to my previous values. The significance of that became evident when I reached the Storage section - no way could I get the optical drive discovered/reported/listed. Shrug, move forward anyway.

Issued the suggested "command". Then the "Start Windows 98 Setup and configure the hard drive (enable large disk support)" step - no way could the drive be formatted or anything. Visible and reported in "Storage", but impassable/impossible.

Delete VM, uninstall VM Manager, rinse and repeat. Groundhog day indeed. Clearly (to me) some ghost from yesterday's "nearly there" setup is causing the difference/difficulty today. Any experiences like that, and constructive suggestions

To ensure that you have completely removed the old profile, delete the relevant folder from [%UserProfile%\VirtualBox VMs] .

[Pedro Z]

OK removed the profiles and uninstalled VB.

Restarted the process following that tutorial.

When it came to "storage", it showed the virtual HD but no optical. Hovering indicated this could be done later, so moved on.

Started setup, obviously the CD drive was found automagically, CD driver installed and reverted to A:\ prompt. (The host, like most things this millennium, doesn't have a floppy ...).

Issued the format command and greeted with "Invalid drive specification" - see attached sceeenshot - no C: device.

Where's my virtual HDD?

Format_fail.jpg (35.57 KiB) Viewed 10973 times

Current state of VM Storage shows both WIN98SE.vdi (pri-master) and Host Drive "D:" (sec-master).

Obviously I am doing something incorrectly by 5.2.42 standards vs the tutorial. Ideas?

[scottgus1]

some config settings appeared to have survived the Uninstall process, and were pre-filled to my previous values.

This is because uninstalling Virtualbox does not delete the guests or config files, just like uninstalling Word does not delete the .doc files. If this happened, upgrading could be rather difficult. See https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch10. ... configdata

If you want to get rid of an earlier attempt to make a guest, right-click the guest in the guest list and choose Remove, then Delete All Files or Remove Only. Remove Only keeps the guest folder ready to be used again. Delete All Files is complete immediate 'nuke it from orbit'.
If you want to completely reset Virtualbox to factory-new settings:
1. right-click and Remove... each guest. Guests can be reconnected after the reset if they are Removed Only.
2. log out and back in on the host, so no Virtualbox processes are running.
3. Go to C:\Users\{you} and rename/delete the folder '.Virtualbox' (note the period at the start of the folder's name.
4. start Virtualbox. All new and shiny! A Virtualbox uninstall will not reset to factory settings and is unnecessary.

It appears that your guest does not have a C drive. Try letting the New Guest Wizard set up the guest and not removing anything.

[Pedro Z]

Thanks for the extended version detailing the "removal" process.

It appears that your guest does not have a C drive.

Re the C: drive, the drive was created and formatted during the VM creation process, which makes it's non-existence all the more confusing.

[mpack]

I have split the above discussion from the "Discuss the Win98 Tutorial" topic, since it does not really discuss the tutorial.

[Pedro Z]

Sorry if my posting has messed up the order/hierarchy/system here, although it is relevant to Kurt's tute as following it diligently doesn't lead to the expected/suggested outcome.

Happy to continue pursuing this to some resolution wherever on the forum. (Currently have exactly 20 VirtualBox tabs open in my browser with so much stuff it's easy to lose track of where I am).

[Pedro Z]

Try letting the New Guest Wizard set up the guest and not removing anything.

Wizard in 5.2.42? (recall this host is Win7PRO/32 ...). All I found was the NEW button, which I have been using.

[scottgus1]

All I found was the NEW button

That's what I was referring to. If you wish, after you make the new Windows 98 guest, you can right-click the guest in the main Virtualbox window's guest list, choose Show in Explorer. Zip the guest's .vbox file, and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab. This way we can see what hardware your guest has and see if it's a Virtualbox configuration error or a different error that is causing the missing C drive.

[Pedro Z]

That sounds like a plan! I was getting nowhere here, just going around in a loop.

WIN98SE.zip

Current situation ...

(1.32 KiB) Downloaded 26 times

[scottgus1]

Right off I see some differences between the .vbox file you posted and the 98SE guest I just made on my Windows 7 host running Virtualbox 5.2.28 (probably not much different from 5.2.42). My .vbox file is below:

Scott's windows98se.zip

(1.22 KiB) Downloaded 12 times

These differences could be from your following Kurt's tutorial, though. I ran the install only using the 98SE CD-Rom installer, no command line. The installer found and formatted the C drive and installed 98SE with no trouble.

Does your CD-Rom have a "Boot from CD-ROM" and "Start Windows 98 Setup from CD-Rom" options?

[Pedro Z]

The installer found and formatted the C drive and installed 98SE with no trouble.

Yes, if you go back to my first post (second para) where I "just banged it in" (after reading but not following the tute) it installed OK and ran with the mouse/video issues. So I nuked that (almost, as it turned out) and all subsequent attempts following the tute met the same stumbling block with C: not found.

I'm a user, not a behind-the-scenes fiddler for some time now. Most recent programming was reverse-engineering and coding 8-bit stuff and writing apps in VB-DOS. So the significance of some of the tick-box selections in the tute is lost on me.

Does your CD-Rom have a "Boot from CD-ROM" and "Start Windows 98 Setup from CD-Rom" options?

Absolutely. Full retail 98SE.

[Pedro Z]

Just for ####'s-&-giggles I deleted the VM and machine and the folder previously mentioned, then created a new VM and set RAM and created a 20GB vhd. Straight off, started/boot_from_CDROM/Start_with_CDROM_support (which is what I did on Day 1). Then tried from D:\WIN98 to format C: Nope, same error from C: not found.

Delete VM and folder, UNINSTALL VirtualBox (*). Check registry. Probably fifty or more hits on a search for "Oracle" so the uninstall doesn't tidy up in there as I would have expected.

(*) personally have trouble using "VB" for VirtualBox due to Visual Basic history.

[pt58]

There's a step missing in Kurt's tutorial.
You won't be able to format c: until you've created a primary partition on the drive using fdisk.

[Kurt_Aust]

On a brand new, clean all-zero disk (which is what VirtualBox creates), you can't just "Start with CD-Rom support" and then "Format C:", the HDD's partition table has to be created first.

That's why the first installation step is: Start Windows 98 Setup and configure the hard drive (enable large disk support)