virtualbox.org

Hello,

I've been able to get Windows 98 running with sound and display drivers working with Display Doctor. When running Rain the CPU would drop from about 100 to about 10%. However, anytime I do something like running a game on Win98 the CPU percentage flies all the way up to 100% again. Is there anyway to fix this.

Does it sound like I need a faster computer?

I'm running on a Mac with a 2.26 GHz Intel Processor with 2 GB of Memory if that helps.

Yes, there is a fix: Use a non-DOS-based OS. You dont have this problems with NT, 2K, XP, ...

Actually the same problem appears whenever using software that uses 16 bit calls even on XP guests. The software will work, but at the same high cpu, low speed as the entire Windows 98SE operating system works when it is a guest on VirtualBox.

I experienced this on my XP guest when running the old AfterDark 3.2XP screensaver software. This same software runs at full speed on 98SE and XP guests using VMware Workstation. It's old hat for VMware, who also are not devoting any resources for such old operating systems and software but have maintained compatibility for using such on their newest releases.

I think this is a result of VMware being around longer, and in the old days optimizing their software for the current operating systems at the time (the Windows 9x series) and VirtualBox coming later when they felt they had no reason to work on 16 bit software compatibility on 32 bit processors.

Hence I use both VirtualBox and VMware and made sure to reward VMware for maintaining compatibility by purchasing VMware Workstation. If one wants the free as in beer route they could install a trial of VMware Workstation with the full download including the guest tools, burn the guest iso's, uninstall it, install the free VMware Player, create the 98SE guest, and install the tools via the burnt tools cd.

Lately folks have been finding that Windows 98SE guest speed can be fine on VirtualBox if they have newer hardware capable of supporting hardware cpu access, activated in VirtualBox after 98SE is installed. I don't have such newer hardware so I haven't been able to test that.

this is a bug of windows 98 (it happens on real hardware, too)
look here: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... 025#p39025

No, thats not a Bug, that is WinDOS.

Dos based Windoze doesnt have a modern OS Design with a real Task Scheduling and Event Messaging.

So a running process always gets 100 %.

Better use NT, 2K, XP, ..., so you dont have this problem.

Thanks for you're advice

to Eck,
I'll be checking out VMware, hopefully it runs 98 a bit better. I was thinking of using VMware, but I just didn't think it would run any different.

I wanted to use 98 to play old games I didn't think XP was going to play, I seem remember having mixed results for some games with XP.

There are no Guest Additions for Win98, forget it.

Dos Games work well with DosBox.

stefan.becker wrote:There are no Guest Additions for Win98, forget it.

Dos Games work well with DosBox.

No, but I tried VMware and it supports the same features that I'd expect with Guest Additions from VirtualBox.

cpu usage is down significantly, I can use the virtual Machine in full screen and all the features seem to work nicely!
Thanks, Eck Win98 ran super fast on VMware

Good going.

Of course there are guest additions as well as full support for 98SE in VMware as a guest. 2D games and software from Windows 3.1 thru Windows Me vintage as well as most of the XP years until fairly recently work just fine on a 98SE guest. They won't be going nuts to develop or update that support or provide any Direct 3D or openGL acceleration but what they have now still works perfectly. They are starting to abandon it, as they don't even update the version number of the guest additions to match newer VMware releases so the tools always think they need an update to a newer version that doesn't exist.

Correct on the Dosbox recommendation. For MS-DOS games just use Dosbox within your real operating system.

I have encountered software and games of 9x vintage that had worked fine on XP until XP Service Pack 2, let alone 3. Some stuff was just broken by whatever bug fixes or security updates came out with and since Service Pack 2. It's nice to be able to use those things in a Windows 98SE guest that runs at full speed with fine sound and video using the VMware 98SE guest tools and the Creative WDM SB128 PCI driver update.

Consult the 98SE forums on msfn.org for more things to play with to make 98SE as up to date and fixed up as is possible.

Just for 100% CPU: see the Win95/98 Tutorial from Technologov - and use the ACPI switches at Win98 setup as suggested there.