Win98 SE in VirtualBox

I've successfully installed VirtualBox 4.0.6 using the RPM and managed to install Win98SE with a few hiccups. This test install is a prelude to copying a Win98SE installation from an old, inactive box so I can recycle the box. I've copied Win98SE to boxes with different hardware before, and used the Device Manager to "install" the new hardware. It's a bit of work, but it beats the dickens out of recreating the entire installation from scratch.

My problem is that I'm not having any luck changing the video settings of my test Win98SE installation. I'm trying to get a resolution of 1024x768 with "High Color (16-bit)." I reboot the virtual box after making changes but the changes don't stick. I get the standard "problem with your video settings" messages.

I'd appreciate any suggestions on what I need to do to change the video settings. I think I need to "upgrade" the video card, but I expect that I have to tweak VirtualBox as well. In the mean time, I'll look around over at the VirtualBox forums. Thanks.

Try using bearwindow's video drivers.

http://bearwindows.boot-land.net/

The last time I tried VirtualBox to do this, these were good and worked.

However, VirtualBox is not optimized at all for Windows 98. I'm sure you already know that. In fact, it's painfully slow the last time I checked unless they fixed it. I don't even recommend fighting with it unless you absolutely need to use virtualbox.

VMware unfortunately is the best for running Win 9x.

@Jcink: Thanks for the suggestions. Since VMware is pay-to-play, I'll soldier along with the free VirtualBox.

I found quite a bit of helpful info on the VirtualBox forums. In particular, there's a sticky entitled "Tutorial: Windows 95/98 guest OSes" (23-SEP-2008) <http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9918>. It's takeaways are:

1) Win98SE is preferred.

2) FORCE ACPI support to be installed when installing Win98SE. This will limit CPU usage. Third party apps also limit CPU usage.

3) For sound, enable sound in VirtualBox and select "Sound Blaster 16".

4) By default, Win98 will run only in 640x480 resolution, 16-colors and this slows VBox emulation. install video drivers from BearWindows or SciTech Display Doctor v7beta.

5) For networking, set VBox to NAT and select "AMD PCnet-II" NIC.

6) Win98 does not "integrate" well with the host OS, Win, *nix, or Mac. You have to manually enable & disable the mouse in the VBox window. You have to network with the host OS to share files. The clipboard is also isolated, but a 3rd party app exists.

I'll add a 7th: Practice, practice, practice.

Since my goal is simply to maintain a working Win98 installation, the integration issues are relatively minor. If I find any clever solutions to making VBox Win98SE work with SL6, I'll add them here.

Isn't VMware Server free? I use Workstation but someone was telling me the other day that Server has slightly reduced functionality but is free. Might be wrong though I haven't checked.

VMware Server is indeed free.
All the info can be found here.

Thanks spoovy, didn't know it was

I first learned to use VMWare Server, then found VB and never went back....maybe it's time to take another looksie

I installed 32-bit video drivers in WIn98, but VBox is still painfully slow.

I'm going to look into VMWare Player <http://www.vmware.com/products/player/> since they claim: "VMware Player can also be used to run a virtual copy of an old PC so that you can recycle the old machines you have under your desk or stored in the closet."

Yea, VMWare player also has it's own issues. The recent releases seem to have been bloated to the point where it's just simply unusable on my laptop. Same thing applies for the recent VMware Workstation releases...

It got so slow that I heard some of the instructors at my school that relied on VMware to get their teaching done had the students switch over to VBox.

Thanks for the info....I have Win7 x32 in VB on a SL "only" laptop....it works great, but I've heard IT people say you shouldn't keep anything in VB for production because things can get corrupted. I had Quickbooks stop working in this machine and got a little paranoid. I traced the problem to a corrupted .NET file and can't fix it even with a reinstall. But I'm not sure it's actually corrupted or a VB "thing" where by running >sfc /scannow in a root term in Windows in VB will always "look" corrupted due to VB....

I'm going off thread.....

EDIT: I've used VB for three years with Windows Clients, for work, and have never lost data.

Interesting you say that as I have the exact opposite experience. I used VBox for a while but ver 4 was so slow I abandoned it for VMware workstation which I find superior in every way, with much lower overhead (comes at a cost mind). The network editor is useful too.

I installed VMware Player 3.1.4 build-385536 and I'm very happy with it, although I'm still a bit wobbly with some aspects of the virtualization.

Going back to my original post, I've learned that a 16 color, 640x480 VGA display is also the default for VMwP. The fix is to install VMware Tools in Win98 (yes newbies, you install a VMware program in the guest OS), and you get 32-bit color and 1024x768 resolution. One feature I like is that VMwP resizes the guest OS screen resolution so that when you run VMwP in a window, you always see the entire guest OS desktop.

Next up, figuring out how to create floppy images so I can play with DOS 6.22 & Windows 3.11.

Thanks for your help.