getting 98 networking up n running

[MikeKB]

hello all
so no flames please, im a bit new to VB

i simply wanted to have a bit of nostalgia and play with 98 i havent done in 20 yrs im a network guy, so i also wanted to play with NETBEUI

anyway, right off the bat i get a boot error, missing VSERVER.VXD file. i have read that is NETBIOS/FILE SHARING driver. i can still boot past that, but i do not get the file sharing option anymore for files or disk. i have reinstalled the protocols/etc to no avail

it is asking to copy that file from the CD /installation disk. this i do not no how to do as i have never had to. and i must know how to do this because i am sure, in the future, i will run into more missing files along the way on my many other guest OSes. so if i could get a STEP BY STEP to do this process i would truly be grateful !!

(my host is 11)

[MikeKB]

ill assume no one knows? thanks

[MikeKB]

will someone for the love of god explain this msoft crap i keep running into? ok, so i get it. 98 was not a networking by default OS apparently. this is proof in the fact one had to INSTALL file/print off the damn cd! but here is my question. because if i can figure this out, i can probably finally this network option. it keeps asking me when i go to install file/print to insert a CD of the 98SE setup/etc. i can browse this no problem. problem is , and this baffles me!... it never once asks me what driver it is even looking for! so im suppossed to just feed it INFs and just guess!?? who the hell does this!? have any of you out there ran into this issue? so is 98 file/print impossible in VB? i say it is and i dare someone to PROVE ME WRONG! ive been at this now 2 days

(every INF it points to on that "cd", i get back "this does not match your hardware information". once again, not telling me a thing about what it even wants for a driver!)

[mpack]

Please note that we are all fellow users here. You have no support contract and in fact have no rights whatsoever. So please don't come back here cussing only a few hours after your first post - that just irritates people and is the express line to a permanent ban.

Next up, few of us give two hoots about Win98. Dev resources are spent where the financial returns are, meaning on scenarios important to the business users who buy support contracts. Yes, DOS based operating systems can be run on VirtualBox, but they are not supported. The supported Windows OS's are all from the NT family (NT4, Win2K, XP, Vista, Win8, Win8.1, Win10, Win11). And in fact only the last three have full support.

None of us that I know of are affiliated with Microsoft, so no, nobody here will explain "this msoft crap" to you. Go to an MS forum for that. Nor do we provide free support for obsolete Microsoft products, at least not unless you ask nicely.

If you gather yourself and ask a clear, narrow question using as few words as possible then I'm sure someone can help. In the meantime I hope you have read the Win98 tutorials in the Howtos and Tutorials area.

[mpack]

And btw, the reason you got no replies is that as a new visitor your posts were invisible until a mod OK'd them, and unluckily for you, Sunday evening is a bad time to pick if you want quick attention from a mod.

[mpack]

I think the main thing for you to understand is that Win98 predates the era of effectively infinite main disk space. So the standard Win98 installer did not copy itself to the drive, and anything not needed by default home user (in the opinion of Microsoft c1997), is left on the CD. I believe that includes most networking tools. So you almost certainly need to keep the install CD around, and better yet copy it onto the main drive and fix up the registry references to it.

One final note: in my experience Win98SE is not forwards compatible with modern LANs, meaning that Win98 can't see many LAN resources. Modern LANs are however backwards compatible, so can see folders shared by Win98 - at least if you enable SMB1 which is disabled by default in Win10+.

[BillG]

As mpack stated, PCs in 1998 had very little storage space, so extra drivers were not copied to the PC at installation time. If you installed a new piece of hardware to a Windows PC, you had to retrieve the driver from the installer medium if it was not included with the new device. It was a long and complicated process.

I get that missing file error too, and skip over it. It would not do you any good anyway, because file sharing does not work with newer versions on Windows, not even Windows 7. Network Neighborhood will see them, but the permissions system is different and it asks for a password.

Win7fromW98.PNG (17.77 KiB) Viewed 3884 times

The only way I have ever successfully copied files into a Win98 vm was to copy them from a network shared drive. Mine appears in NN as Readyshare and is hosted by my Netgear router.

NetworkDrive.PNG (21.35 KiB) Viewed 3884 times

Win98Copyfile.PNG (11.43 KiB) Viewed 3881 times

[ghr]

Depending on what you can do: the simplest option might be to use the unofficial DOS (!) GA from javispedro, detailed elsewhere on this forum. They will work for anything that boots into DOS or equivalent, so any pre-NT MS OS. Next, you can use networking (my latest host is Win 10 Pro). I don't have Win11 so can't speak for that one.