virtualbox.org

So I have a windows 95 boot image. I mounted with with Deamon Tools to drive H. Here is the point i get to (see attachment), I dont know what to do to get it to setup from a virtual drive.

Quite a few tutorials exists into the relevant section of the forums. You should have a look first.

f you got that far then you've already started the installer - you need only continue: mount the next disk in the drive, using the "Devices" menu to change the virtual CD media. As media you can select a CD image file (i.e. an ISO), or a host drive. There was no need to use Deamon Tools to mount an ISO - VirtualBox can read those directly.

noteirak wrote:Quite a few tutorials exists into the relevant section of the forums. You should have a look first.

Ive been looking around for hours, no one seems to be using the same iso with Deamon tools. Ive tried windows 95 with two differnt iso's i have and even windows 98. Each time i get to the part where it wants to read the disc from drive A-E, the only ones actually on my computer, and It says drives F-H are invalid drive selections or I cant even choose them. Just need pointed in the right direction.

Read mpack advice just before your new post, it seems to be the answer to your problem

mpack wrote:f you got that far then you've already started the installer - you need only continue: mount the next disk in the drive, using the "Devices" menu to change the virtual CD media. As media you can select a CD image file (i.e. an ISO), or a host drive. There was no need to use Deamon Tools to mount an ISO - VirtualBox can read those directly.

Just did that, when i push enter it just flashes and goes no where. I would think the issue is with my "boot.img" but how could it be if the program started at all....

I go to Devices>Floppy Devices> and select Boot.img, the same one i used in the "Storage" settings to start everything.

Please clarify: are you using a CD image or a floppy image? If the latter, were you using Daemon tools to mount the floppy image?

If it's a floppy, then VirtualBox only directly supports raw (no header), uncompressed floppy images. I.e. a byte for byte image of the disk. You can tell the floppy is of this type because the image size should exactly match the expected size. E.g. if it's an image of a 1.44MB floppy then the file should be exactly 1,474,560 bytes. Anything larger or smaller than that, even by one byte, means that VirtualBox probably can't use it.

If CD: data CDs are defined by a standard: ISO-9660 and later derivatives. So data CDs can be represented by ISO format image files (.iso files).

mpack wrote:Please clarify: are you using a CD image or a floppy image? If the latter, were you using Daemon tools to mount the floppy image?

If it's a floppy, then VirtualBox only directly supports raw (no header), uncompressed floppy images. I.e. a byte for byte image of the disk. You can tell the floppy is of this type because the image size should exactly match the expected size. E.g. if it's an image of a 1.44MB floppy then the file should be exactly 1,474,560 bytes. Anything larger or smaller than that, even by one byte, means that VirtualBox probably can't use it.

If CD: data CDs are defined by a standard: ISO-9660 and later derivatives. So data CDs can be represented by ISO format image files (.iso files).

It is exactly that byte size. I also created a burned disc from the image. And that did not work.

Here is the link to the youtube video i was using to attempt this, the user has the actual disc but provided a link to the boot image i have been using.


How to install Windows 95 Virtual Box
User: CpblackopsMW3 (sorry cant post the actual link).

Well, if you like you can PM me a zipped copy of the img file. I'll check if the disk is readable and bootable.

mpack wrote:Well, if you like you can PM me a zipped copy of the img file. I'll check if the disk is readable and bootable.

How do i attach a file, I couldnt find the upload attachment in the PM.

Have you read one of the first section in the tutor properly?
Most CD-ROMs available for Windows 95/98 are not bootable, which means, that you must boot from DOS floppy, install DOS first and only then install Windows 95/98.

Ok, I got your file, thanks for the link.

To end any further confusion: you should not have used the word "ISO" in the topic title. An "ISO" refers exclusively to an image of a data CD, since it alludes to the ISO-9660 filesystem used on data CDs. Your file "BOOT.IMG" is a straight floppy image, there are no CDs or ISOs involved. You have led many people down the garden path with that one, including me. Please in future try to avoid jargon words you don't understand.

Ok, as to your floppy image. Boot.img is, as it's name implies, a bootable floppy image. It is not corrupted. Here is the contents, which I got by mounting the floppy in an XP VM (Devices|Floppy) and making a screenshot of the contents.

As you can see, this is a standard boot floppy, also typical of a rescue floppy. It contains most of the tools necessary (format, disk) to format a hard disk. In fact that's what I suggest you next do, as you can't run an installer (to hdd) until you have a disk prepared to install on. It also contains the tool "OEMSETUP.EXE" which will be the first step of a Windows 95 installation. I didn't want to zap my XP VM, so of course I didn't let this run.

I assume you wouldn't choose Win95 without knowing what it's limitations were, but just in case: when Win95 came out, data CDs were relatively new. A typical PC couldn't be assumed to have a CD drive, never mind one which the BIOS was capable of booting from. Hence a Windows installer often came on a set of 5 or 6 floppies, which you had to insert one at a time when prompted. Also the installer, due to lack of space (after all 6 floppies is less than 10MB total), would have been much less self contained, e.g. you might have have been presumed to be starting from a working DOS hdd installation rather than an entirely blank PC.

This floppy might be disk 1 of the set, or there might have been a prior DOS installer, as for some reason this seems to have been designed to launch right into the Win95 bit without allowing you to fdisk and format first. I suggest you look at tutorials for installing DOS, before you look at upgrading DOS to Win95.

Personally, I would regard Win98SE as the oldest version of Windows you should bother installing in order to use. Win98SE was the first to come with a self contained CD installer as you would recognize it.

Alright thank you. Appreciate all the help you provided. Sorry for the confusion i caused. Glad I could get some direction and advice.

For future reference it might be worth noting that a set of Windows 95 installation floppies often included disks of non-standard size. They were often formatted with 21 sectors per track rather than the usual 18 (with smaller inter-sector gaps) giving a total disk size of 1680kb. These are never going to work as disk images within VirtualBox.