Virtual Box & Windows 95

[Barbarian Roman]

Hi,
I want to install windows 95 in virtual box. I lost the CD a long time ago but still have the product key for some reason, so I downloaded an ISO file. Only, when I try to install the operating system by going into devices and choosing the CD devices (the iso is mounted by daemon tools), it doesn't recognize anything there, and says no bootable media found, even when I restart my machine. It worked fine for me when I installed windows XP in virtual box. Any help?

 

[Mystere]

Windows 95 retail and upgrade versions were not bootable. Only the OEM version was bootable, and if your product key does not contain OEM, then it's a retail (or corporate) key. Thus, the CD won't be bootable.

You will have to install DOS to it first, then configure the DOS CD driver, then run the setup program from the CD.

 

[Barbarian Roman]

Ok I finally got it installed but I have no sound and internet, and USB isn't showing up, even though I have a USB supported version. What do I do? Didn't have these problems on installing Windows 2000 and XP (though I know virtualbox doesn't run great on Windows 95).

 

[Mystere]

Windows 95 didn't support USB, the first version to support USB was Windows 98. The sound and internet problems are likely because there aren't any virtual drivers for Windows 95 (Windows 98 changed the driver model).

 

[Barbarian Roman]

Windows 95 didn't support USB, the first version to support USB was Windows 98. The sound and internet problems are likely because there aren't any virtual drivers for Windows 95 (Windows 98 changed the driver model).

But my version in the readme said its USB supported. The last two versions of Windows 95 (released in 1996) were USB supported. Most weren't, but I'm pretty sure mine is.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
First you need to ensure that the virtual USB driver is actually installed on the host. This usually is done automatically when you first plug a usb device into the VM.

Check in the configuration file for the vm to see if you can add a USB controller in the virtual hardware.

I'm not sure about "Hot plugging and swapping" in W95 so you might need to have the USB device plugged into the Host before powering on the VM. Then after the vm is powered on in the settings you can usually disconnect the device from the Host and connect it to the VM.

As for sound vmware uses a pretty basic "Sound Blaster" 16 bit legacy device for its "Virtual sound card".

If W95 doesn't support this (it should as SB was in those days pretty much the "Sound standard") then you won't get sound.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Mystere]

But my version in the readme said its USB supported. The last two versions of Windows 95 (released in 1996) were USB supported. Most weren't, but I'm pretty sure mine is.

Later versions of Windows 95 were OEM only, I assumed you were using a retail version.

In any event, no version of Windows 95 released in 1996 supported USB. The first version to support it was OSR2 with the USB Supplement to OSR2. The supplement was released in August 1997.

There was also an OSR 2.1 released in August 1997 that did not need the supplement, and OSR2.5 which was released in November of 1997. Both of those supported USB 1.1, which means they may not work with a USB 2.0 port (even though USB 2.0 is backwards compatible with 1.1, that's only for devices.. not drivers).

First, tell me what the README file says for the release version, and what is the release date. Also, tell me what the Computer Properties says the version number is.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
the OSR version DOES actually support USB (1.0 / 1.1) - I had a really old laptop lying around and installed OSR 2 on it -- I had an image of the disc that I'd stached away in an archive so I re-created a physical bootable CD image of the OSR2 system. ==> Moral never chuck stuff away -- archive it !!!!

I needed to set the BIOS to support legacy USB devices and then it worked fine - although using large disks will cause a problem -- you need to set LBA on if your disk drive will support this -- I think it won't work with some of the large modern 500 GB / 1 TB drives -- I didn't dare risking a drive on this.

An old 20 GB drive did work -- but data transfer is as SLOW as Molasses.

Virtual machine worked fine -- I "Cheated" by using on W7 the vmware stand alone converter to convert the W95 system on the laptop - connected on to the network via a LAN cable -- couldn't get the really old crappy wireless card in the laptop to work on W95 and then converted the machine to run on vmware's esxi which it did just fine -- with the USB working too.

Laptop was an OLD OLD sony VAIO machine -- designed for XP but it ran W95 OSR2 just fine.

Thanks for starting this thread -- I had a lot of fun trying this out and I quite liked the look of the old W95 interface.

It WORKS even on vmware's bare metal hypervisor ESXi.

Note that Internet access is via IE 4.0 so you'll get funny rendering on a lot of sites these days and forget flash.

Note that in this case I couldn't get SOUND to work but it SHOULD work if you use vmware workstation / vmware player / vmware server to power on your vm.

Vmware esxi doesn't have a lot of support for sound -- it's a "lottery call" if it works. RDP sound will work but you can only logon via RDP to a remote Windows computer if the remote OS is W98 or later.

You can use W95 as a CLIENT computer to log on with RDP to a remote computer -- download the XP RDP client --it actually works !!!!!.

For Esxi however use the (free) Vsphere client -- just power on the vm and open the console.


Cheers

jimbo