importing a system from a directory?

ian_ball · Post by **ian_ball** » 3. Jul 2008, 02:44

Hi,

I was certain this question would have been answered in a manual or asked before, but so far I haven't found anything.

I have an old tar file of a windows 98 installation that I now need to boot. This extracts fine into a directory, but I see no way to get VirtualBox to make use of this directory, or import the files from the directory into a virtual disk. A new installation is not possible as all the extra software isn't easily available to me any more.

I would be very grateful if someone could point me in a direction so that I can get this old installation running in a virtual machine.

Thanks
Ian

Post by **TerryE** » 3. Jul 2008, 04:54

It is possible but its going to be convolved because Win98 assumes a DOS MBR and certain bootstrap files need to be at the front of the disk. The OS also requires certain files to have system and hidden attributes set. I am not sure whether TAR format maintains these.

Do a google of (Win98 OR "Windows 98") site:virtualbox.org and you'll get lost of hits. Have a browse.

I could tell you how to bootstrap a host based tar onto a VFAT partitioned VDI using a LiveCD iso which you can connect to your Virtual CDROM, but you need to solve the other issues first.

ian_ball · Post by **ian_ball** » 8. Jul 2008, 03:31

Hi,

After days of fighting, and wondering why nothing worked, I finally got my windows 98 installation on an old 3.2Gb hard drive to the point where it started booting.

Before it gets to the desktop, it simply exits, the virtual machine goes into a power off state, the window with the virtual machine disappears

I gave the virtual machine the whole hard drive, and there is one partition of 3.2gGb. There is no cdrom drive, and no floppy drive. The vm gets 192Mb ram, 4Mb video ram, has an os type of win 98, acpi and apic is off, IDE controller i have tried PIIX3 and 4.

I have no idea what is going on here. Would any one have any suggestions for me???

Post by **TerryE** » 8. Jul 2008, 04:02

Have you tried going into your host BIOS [temporarily] set your boot order to boot from the 3.2 Gb HDD? If it fails to boot then your probs are nothing to do with Vbox and all to do with your Win98 installation. If I recall, in order for your HDD to boot Win98, your HDD needs a Win98 MBR followed by the following files:

IO.SYS (the System boot file)
CONFIG.SYS (Loads the device drivers)
MSDOS.SYS

One way of fixing your disk is to download a Win98 Emergency Boot Disk (EBD) image (this is just a 1.44Mb download) and mount it on your virtual Floppy and set your boot order to boot from this. you can then do a SYS C: to make your virtual C drive bootable.

Here is a discussion of the Win98 EBD that I found on a quick browse: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6939/DO ... readme.htm.

I suspect that your current probs are nothing to do with VBox, but more getting your Disk to boot any way.

Post by **TerryE** » 8. Jul 2008, 04:57

Sorry Ian, I misread your post. You've obviously got past the initial boot stage, so my last post is irrelevant. But I am not sure that you followed my suggestion to google the site and do some research on this either. For example, the User FAQ has a whole section on the botches that you need to do to get Win98 to work. Have you followed any of these through? There are dozen of posts and tickets listed.