Access Denied, too many folder levels and other pet peeves

Sir, yes sir. Guest additions aren't available, which means you may have limited use of host USB ports, etc, but it is still a supported guest OS.

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch...guestossupport

Sir, Yes Sir huh? Well my fellow GI, I will try this out. Thanks muchly for your help.

Well Deacon, that was a complete bust. I've spent the morning trying to load 95, 98, and xp but the product codes I have are all OEM, as the software was installed on the computer. I've really had it, and would in younger days thrown anything that had anything to do with MS out this third story window. Really am sick of wasting my life, especially what little is left, dealing with all this paranoia. I still live in a place where we leave the keys in the car and the house unlocked, and no one needs to have permission to visit.

I can see where VM would be a much better way of dealing with dual software rather than dual booting as it gives you the ability to work on one system and have the other system running on another screen, but I don't have the patience any more.

Thanks for your help

I'm not sure what this has to do with paranoia or security. If your keys aren't working for 95 or 98, then you aren't using the right type of discs. They don't have any activation associated with them. You need to match up your disc with the type of key you are trying to use. As for XP, if you have an XP SP3 disc, it should take any key you give it, once the install is complete. If you don't have an SP3-incorporated disc, you should make one quickly with AutoStreamer. What you are hitting are simple hurdles to overcome.

AutoStreamer 1.0.33 - Neowin Forums

I assumed we were talking about the discs for operating systems to be loaded into VM. Or am I mistaken?

The discs that I have with OSs on them, Deacon, are the discs sent by Dell with the computer (actually, they no longer send the discs unless you complain to them, as I did with both XP and 7). Labeled "For Distribution with a new PC" or that equivalent. These discs show up on the system info page like this: "Windows is activated, Product code is 00359-OEM-8994547-00095" Unfortunately, using this disc to install Windows in the VM brings up the "Enter Product Code" page which has 5 boxes for 5 digits each. Didn't matter which OS I installed, they all asked this.

When I called Dell, they told me that the OS was specific to the machine it came with and if reinstalled on that machine, that page would not come up. OSs were not transferable to another machine. Since I have never updated an OS to a newer version, I don't have a disc that is store bought. And since I have only purchased thru the college purchase program, I only have dell machines.

In any case, I have loaded XP, and since there is a built-in 30 day time period to use the OS without registering, I have tried it out. Some things work, however older programs all seem to have something not functioning. (For example, a dos era cad program, which worked well in XP thru a Command Prompt window, opens into 1/9 of the screen while whiting out the rest of the screen, and the mouse only works on the bottom left quarter of that smaller screen shifting to the white area.)

I will load Win95 into VM and try them (older ones) out in it. If I can get some functionality out of them perhaps I can work with that to transfer data to something more up to date. Very tedious, but possible, and better than lost data, however time consuming.

At this point, I have spend over 40 hours on this issue, and work I get paid to do has piled up with no little irritation to others.

Again, Deacon, thanks for your help and the tip about VM