Installing Windows 95

[klow]

Hi guys! I found many help stuff for installing Windows 95, but it never mentions the very first step, so I cannot start anything.

So. I have created a virtual machine for Win95 and all, I have the original install CD bought back then, and I set up a virtual floppy with the proper boot disk. So I'm ready on that end. Then when I launch the installation through VirtualBox, the DOS prompt asks me to type something in "A:". What do I have to type? Shouldn't I launch the CD instead?... I just don't remember, having seen and not performed a Win95 install only a few times, and only back then.

So I just don't get it. Could you get me started? Thanks!

[Perryg]

Back in the day.... A really long time ago....

Windows 95 came in a couple of flavors and one of them had a setup floppy which started the install process for you. But I detect that you do not have the original Floppy to make this happen. Then there was the upgrade flavor that required DOS to be installed first, which is what I think you have. Either way the process back in the good old days was to Use the DOS disk to boot the PC and then you ran fdisk to partition the hard drive and then format to format the partition is Fat 32. Below are the suggested procedures.

• 1. Boot to the A: drive using the boot floppy (or image)
  2. Partition the drive C:
  3. Format the C: drive and to make drive C: bootable put "/s" at the end without the "" to install the system files. (format c: /s)

After this to be able to use the cd you will need to have mscdex.exe and a cdrom driver. (Google for these) and create a config.sys and autoexec.bat with the proper information to load the cdrom.

[klow]

This seems worst than I thought. Do I really have to create a new partition? I'm running Win XP and I just wanted Win95 to be in a small corner.

[Perryg]

klow,

The reason for VBox is to be able to install other operating systems inside the primary one. How else would you be able to run a complete OS within the one you have now. Installing any OS you create a place to install it and this is called a partition. But installing Windows 95 on newer machines is a chore for most and to tell you the truth the only reason I did it was for nostalgia. You can't do a lot in it anymore these days.

[nuntius-rex]

You have to partition the virtual drive not your actual drive.

I was able to get Win95 to install but had to jump through some hoops.

For some reason my boot disk (iso) did not read for the floppy. So i had to boot the machine with it as a CD and then change it to the Win95 CD once dos was booted. It went something like this...

1. I booted the machine with the boot disc iso as CD
2. ran fdisk on drive c: (machine virtual disk not your host system)
3. ran format /s on drive c: (machine virtual disk not your host system)
4. Changed the CD iso to point to my Win 95 CD instead of my boot disk.
5. cd c:
6. setup

[klow]

Thanks for your answers, but I'll give up for now.