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I've already had success loading an old program from five 3.5inch disks from an external floppy drive connected to COM5 in Windows 7. I did it by loading all the files from each disk into the shared folder and opening Run.exe.

The program is one of a suite of two from the same application.

But trying the same with the second program also on five 3.5inch disks returns - Cannot open file OWL252.DL_.

The file is present

I've tried loading the files from each floppy into a separate folder with the same name as the disk title. ie Files from Disk title 'DTO 1' went into folder 'DTO 1' and so on for the remaining four disks. Opening Setup.exe in the Folder 'DTO 1' returns 'Cannot find file OWL252.DL_

Which is strange considering OWL252.DL_ is there.

Can anyone help. Thanks

I did it by loading all the files from each disk into the shared folder and opening Run.exe

If the shared folder is a Guest Additions shared folder, the files should be copied into an internal guest folder on the guest's "disk" before running. Guest Additions Shared Folders don't have all the functions a real networked shared folder has. They are just for file transfer.

(Probably a good idea to copy them over even if the shared folder is real, anyway. The installer may have a glitch in it that doesn't like networks for copying that file.)

scottgus1 wrote:

I did it by loading all the files from each disk into the shared folder and opening Run.exe

If the shared folder is a Guest Additions shared folder, the files should be copied into an internal guest folder on the guest's "disk" before running. Guest Additions Shared Folders don't have all the functions a real networked shared folder has. They are just for file transfer.

(Probably a good idea to copy them over even if the shared folder is real, anyway. The installer may have a glitch in it that doesn't like networks for copying that file.)

Thanks scottgus. I dont think the files are in a guest additions folder. They are in the shared folder 'vboxsvr' (E).

I've tried copying them to another folder in the root but with the same result.

the shared folder 'vboxsvr'

That's a Guest Additions Shared Folder. "vboxsvr" is the "server" Virtualbox Guest Additions sets up to get your PC to see the folder being GA-shared.

As to copying it locally, it was just a guess. I think you're running into a glitch with the software itself, not a Virtualbox issue as such. Does the installer fail on a physical PC, if you have one lying about that you can try on?

scottgus1 wrote:

the shared folder 'vboxsvr'

That's a Guest Additions Shared Folder. "vboxsvr" is the "server" Virtualbox Guest Additions sets up to get your PC to see the folder being GA-shared.

As to copying it locally, it was just a guess. I think you're running into a glitch with the software itself, not a Virtualbox issue as such. Does the installer fail on a physical PC, if you have one lying about that you can try on?

I dont sadly. But it did work on my old XP machine now long gone. Looks like dead end. But thanks for trying.

There may still be a way. One of the forum gurus recently mentioned that programs from early days weren't plugged so deeply into the OS as they are now and could be simply copied from one PC to another. The underscore in "OWL252.DL_" is very likely an L, to make "OWL252.DLL". It's a common installer trick, replace the last character of the name with an underscore. You may be able to guess the correct letter. EX_ = EXE, DL_ = DLL, etc. You might be able to unpack and install/run the software yourself.

scottgus1 wrote:The underscore in "OWL252.DL_" is very likely an L, to make "OWL252.DLL". It's a common installer trick, replace the last character of the name with an underscore.

No, don't do that. The .XX_ files are "compressed" and you can't simply replace the last letter. You should use the "expand" command. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/80751

Hmm. Learned something new today! Thanks Socratis!

Hey, no sweat. To be honest, I was a little bit surprised that an experienced old timer such as yourself didn't remember that. Glad it helped.

Not quite old enough, unfortunately. I grew up on Apple II's and a Mac Plus, and fooled about with Win95 but didn't dig deeply into how things got installed off floppies. I didn't really "get" Windows programming-wise until ME, and then it was what could I do with re-writable CDs, mixed playlists and an MP3 CD player....

Thanks for the updates chaps. I did google that underscore thing and came up with the same page socratis. But lots of the files all have the underscore in place of the last letter and they're not all DL_'s. They are the same too on the original floppys. It seems that the Setup.exe command unpacks them and then runs them. So still at a dead end.
Bummer but thanks for your help.

I'll repeat the ONLY thing that you can try:
- Copy all the files inside the VM. Root is not a good idea.
- Run setup.exe from within the VM.
If that does not work, I don't know what will.

One possibility. Maybe the file on that antediluvian storage device is corrupted. Does the other set of disks have a file of the same name and size? If so, try copying it over (after backing up the original).

BTW, Socratis' link is a manual process that expands the files. Try to do that for all files, taking your best guess as to the final extension.

scottgus1 wrote:There may still be a way. One of the forum gurus recently mentioned that programs from early days weren't plugged so deeply into the OS as they are now...

Even now you can often get away with just copying the executable folder. In many cases the application will be designed to take some kind of fallback action if the registry was to be corrupted (or the keys go missing). Some apps will break because it loses paths to various other bits... but simpler (or better designed) apps will not break.

This wouldn't work with VirtualBox itself of course, because of the device driver installs and the extra permission and config issues that implies.

@ukdodger
BTW, what's the application and version that you're trying to install?