virtualbox.org

I've been trying to get VirtualBox windows 98 to work. I got it all set up; resolution is perfect and the colors are perfect to play an old game called zoombinis.
I have the iso of the game I also burnt it onto a disc. But when I tried to launch it it said I needed to insert the CD. And I don't know how to get windows 98 to read my disc drive? I have a windows 8 laptop. I was born in 93 so I'm not 100% familiar with windows 98 anymore. I was older when XP came out and I definitely know how to work that system. Can anyone direct me somewhere that can show me how to do it or explain it to me? I've searched this website and couldn't find anything about it. I got zoombinis to install and come up with an iso program for 98 but was asked to insert a CD for it. Thanks!

Here's a question for you. How did you install the game? Did you or did you not "insert" the CD/ISO in Windows 98? And a more basic question. How did you install Windows 98 to begin with? You had to provide a CD (real or virtual) at some point. Can't you do the same for the game?

A number of games in the Windows 98 era used non-standard CD formats as a form of copy protection. If that is the case for your game, you could try using the actual CD in the drive rather than an ISO. That will work in some, but not all cases.

The trick is still sometimes used. I think the CD format itself was quite standard, it's just that it had deliberate faults, lets say a couple of bad sectors. When you copied the CD the copied bad sectors would contain garbage but would now be readable - no longer bad. Likewise if you image the CD to create an ISO. Hence the software can detect a copied CD.

In VirtualBox even if the virtual CD is associated with the host drive there is no guarantee that VirtualBox will pass on host bad sector errors to the VM. However it should do so if you enable passthrough mode.

So the summary: make sure the CD is the genuine original, and enable passthrough mode in the VM settings for the virtual CD drive.

How do you enable the passthrough mode? I'm really new at this so I don't understand how things work. I just followed someone's directions and installed everything they asked me to. Anyway I got zoombinis to work through an iso I downloaded. I have the real game disc somewhere but I think it doesnt work anymore. The thing is I've looked it up and for windows 8 many people have complained they can't get zoombinis to work in any compatibility mode. So I spent about a whole day struggling to get it to work I had everything all set up and the game installed but to play it needs a CD. And windows 98 refuses to read my disc drive I have no idea how to get it to read it either :/

Passthrough mode is only applicable when a host CD/DVD drive is mapped to the virtual CD drive. So, select the virtual CD drive in Storage, and look at your options for the drive in the right panel. A host drive must be selected there, and contain the game disk, if the speculation above is correct about the disk being copy protected.