virtualbox.org

Hi all

I have a friend who wanted to play an old Sierra game on a modern computer. The last version of Windows it works on is Windows 95. I had problems with the Windows 95 installer crashing in the latest version of VirtualBox, so I'm using an older version (5.0.22 r108108). It's also a portable version which does not need to be installed in the host OS.

Everything seemed to be working fine - the Windows 95 installer ran, the game installed from an ISO image of the game, and it ran ok when I tried it out. The problem is that after a while of playing, the sound completely stops in Windows 95. Even opening up a WAV file and playing it results in no sound. Rebooting Windows 95 doesn't work - the VM has to be completely shut down and started up again.

I didn't change any of the VM's sound settings so it's using the SoundBlaster 16 controller through the Windows DirectSound driver.

If anybody has any suggestions of why this might be happening and how I could solve it I would be really grateful.

Many thanks in advance!

mashers wrote:It's also a portable version which does not need to be installed in the host OS.

That is not the official VirtualBox, that's Portable-VirtualBox. We can't help you here unless you're using the official version.

Thank you for your reply. I have just installed the official version 5.0.22 r 108108 of Virtualbox, downloaded from virtualbox.org. The same problem has occurred here, so the issue does not seem to be related specifically to the portable version.

I tried importing the Windows 95 VM into the latest official build of Virtualbox, but it won't boot. I get an error while Windows 95 is booting saying:

"While initializing device IOS:
Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer."

So I need to use an older version of Virtualbox to get Windows 95 to boot, but I'm getting this sound problem even in the official build. Any advice would be really appreciated.

mashers wrote:While initializing device IOS

Although not a VirtualBox issue, here's what MS has to say about that: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/263466

But, back to your problem, do you have a problem playing sounds in general, or just the Sierra game?

If it's the latter, it might be an issue with games, timing and the fact that the "high-end" games of that era were expecting exclusive access to the hardware. Virtualization makes it a little bit tougher. Take a look at the Win95/98 related FAQs and see if you can find something that betters the situation:

• Tutorial: Windows 95/98 guest OSes
• Windows 98SE step by step
• Windows 98
• Win98SE with ACPI - Success At Last!

Thanks for the reply and all the extra info. I don't actually know whether this is a general problem in the VM as this game is the only thing it is being used for. In the end I set up Basilisk and tried the Classic Mac version, which seems to work much better. Thanks anyway for all your help getting Windows 95 working.