Windows 98 doesn't have any audio

[LikeHumansDo5]

I've been trying to install Windows 98 on Virtualbox 7.0.8 with AC97 sound, and no audio will come out, I've also tried switching the sound card for a Soundblaster 16 to no avail, what could I do? Should I just use an older VirtualBox version?

[scottgus1]

In Virtualbox, the default sound card for Windows 98 is SoundBlaster 16.

The defaults are picked by the Create Virtual Machine wizard to provide the best hardware to put in a VM depending on what drivers are available in the chosen OS that will be installed in the VM.

While it could be an oversight, it is more possible that SoundBlaster was picked as the default because Windows 98 has SoundBlaster drivers built in. And AC97 was not picked as the default because Windows 98 theoretically does not have AC97 drivers built in.

So by changing the sound card selection, 98 installed without drivers for the sound card. Switching to a working card may depend on how well plug-n-play was working in the days of 98.

Please try a new 98 VM, this time leaving the sound card at its default, see if you get sound in the VM.

For the old VM, try viewtopic.php?t=9918 , see section 2 "Sound /Audio Integration"

[mpack]

Switching to a working card may depend on how well plug-n-play was working in the days of 98.

Well it had plug and play, but it wouldn't come anywhere close to modern expectations. It had hot changing of devices, and Win98 would recognize the need for a new driver if it didn't already have one. But most users didn't have the disk space to waste on a vast library of hardware drivers for hardware they didn't use. Nor was automatic downloading drivers from the Internet even close to being a thing! So, every time new hardware was inserted, Win98SE would prompt you to put in the setup CD. Older versions of Win98 might prompt for a setup floppy I guess.

In more modern times (after Win98 was more commonly found in a VM) you can install the contents of the CD into a folder and change some registry entries to point to it. No more prompts.

But in the meantime, the OP should have seen a very obvious "Insert the setup CD" prompt when he changed the hardware. It's odd that he hasn't mentioned it.

There is one more complicating factor in that not all devices in Win98 were plug and play. Printers, CDs and USB devices of course were expected to be dynamically swappable. But a bunch of "legacy" devices that typically came on the motherboard or in an internal slot were not expected to be swapped. These include LPT ports and may have included sound cards, I don't know - but I'd expect so. For these devices you'd have to go to Control Panel | Add new hardware. This remained the case even up to the XP era.