I have some old PC games (Tex Murphy, Leisure Suit Larry, Zork, etc) that I'd like to replay but won't work on my Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit. Tried to download Microsoft Virtual PC but get message saying I cannot use it on a Home Premium machine.

I have an empty hard drive and would like to install something so I can play the old games. Any recommendations?

Les

You can try VMPlayer, which will require that you own a legal copy of the operating system you wish to install (such as Windows 98 or XP).

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/overview.html

Not all games may play; but, you can try it.



Also, for DOS games, you can try DOS Box. In fact, if all you have is DOS games, DOS Box is probably the best bet. It doesn't require that you own a version of DOS to run it.

http://www.dosbox.com/


If you do own a legal copy of DOS and want to use it, you could use VMPlayer to run your games with a DOS virtual machine instead of DOS Box.

What do you mean he's the Doctor? Doctor Who?

Oracle VM VirtualBox
The latest release is version 4.1.16
I just installed it to run Win8 in and it seems excellent
It's also free. Very Good Stuff

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html

Looks like it doesn't support Windows 98 as a guest.

Les

MSU

Cool. I didn't see that in the list of supported guest installs. Looks like I need to get busy.

Les

I just threw on Win 98 original to be sure that it would work also. It does. I don't think the Win 98 install disc is bootable (at least the upgrade disc I have isn't). So you'll need to boot from a bootable floppy or CD with CD-ROM support.

MSU

I'm lost now. As I stated in another post it's not recognizing my Win98 upgrade disc as bootable and I have no floppy drive installed. Don't have a clue what to do now.

Les

Thanks Doc and Mike. I'll check em out.

Les

Microsoft Virtual PC with XP Mode only works with Windows 7 Pro, Ultimate and Enterprise. I use it and it does work well though.

VirtualBox is good for loading up another OS to try getting the games to run. I use this also and it too works well.

Now if these are DOS games your best bet is DOSBox like Doc said. However, I would suggest trying D-fend Reloaded. It's a front end for DOSBox and makes configuration much easier. It also comes with DOSBox as part of it so there's only one program to install. I have a bunch of old DOS games that I run with it. You can find it at the link below.

http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/

MSU

They're Windows 98 games.

Les

Question for jmc and MSU, have you tried VMPlayer? If so, why is VirtualBox better?

What do you mean he's the Doctor? Doctor Who?

Because I never heard of VMPlayer

Just kidding, I've heard of it but never used it. Why? Because a while back there was a discussion of different virtual machine programs and Grogan outlined the pros and cons of them. His hands down choice was VirtualBox. That was good enough for me.

MSU

VM player is an off shoot of VM Workstation and not full featured.
Oracle VM VirtualBox is much better because it is full featured and Free. It is also very easy to use. I say go with the Oracle. It's every bit as good as VM Workstation but FREE. I an not familiar with any of the others that are mentioned and never used them.

The Win8 preview was Horrible to get running in the VM Workstation but using the Oracle it was a breeze. With the Win8 don't install the extra driver package. It just crashed with that.

MSU

Yes, did that work for you? My system(VM)got really slow and did not work properly till I removed it.

I installed it right through the program as I was using it. It just loaded an Image into the CDrom and installed it. My win8 was unusable until I removed it.

That's odd. It works fine for me. However I install the VM Additions with VirtualBox closed though. When I click on the install file it installs and automatically opens VirtualBox.

MSU

Doggonnit hit a snag already. Installed the Oracle program quickly and it was a hassle free install. However, my Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 98SE disks are all upgrade disks and when I try to install in the VM an error pops up that there is no bootable disc in the drive. Will I need to find a Win 98 OEM or is there a way to use the upgrade disk to install? I thought the upgrade discs were bootable.

Les

"I thought the upgrade discs were bootable."
They usually are bootable but will ask for the Previous OPSystem disk to verify the upgrade. For 95 you would need the 3.11 floppy or the contents of it. For 98 you would need the 95 disk and the upgrade disk should do it. It will ask for it during the Fresh install.

There where some upgrade disks that where just the files and not a bootable Disk.

As I recall I have booted from both the 95 and 98 discs to do a clean install and along the way it asks for a previous disc to confirm the upgrade legality. Don't know why the VM program isn't recognizing the disc as I have it pointed to the right DVD drive.

Les

It should. It may be a pain in the butt but perhaps if you make them into an ISO file it will recognize them. I always use an ISO file when
I install into any VM. A real disk should also work the same but maybe not.

Can't figure out how to burn an ISO disc from the Win98 files. Copied all the files from the Win98 disc to my hard drive but Free ISO Burner won't select all the files since it's set to select ISO files. I just burned the files to a blank disc but it didn't work either. Don't know why the VM won't recognize the discs as bootable.

Les

Because they are not bootable. See my post #23 below.

MSU

You can definitely clean install with the upgrade disc's as long as you have a disc or floppy's for the previous version (even if it's an upgrade disc for the previous version). The upgrade disc's were not bootable though until WinXP. You have to boot with a floppy or CD that has CD-ROM support on it. If using a CD, after it boots you swap out the boot disc for the upgrade disc.

MSU

This is turning into a real PITA. I downloaded and installed a program called ImgBurn and created both a Windows 95 and a Windows 98SE ISO disc. It's my understanding that an ISO is a bootable image but Oracle VM Virtual Box keeps saying no bootable disc found. The autorun box did pop up (image below) but I don't know if using it will install Win98 into the VM or what. Any ideas on what's going wrong?

Les

Attachment #1, (jpg file)

MSU

OK. I thought creating the ISO disc would make it bootable.

I tried booting from a Vista disc and got error message:

Windows failed to start. Recent hardware or software change might be the cause.

Info: Ramdisk device creation failed due to insufficient memory.

What do I do now?

Edit: I went into settings and increased the memory size and the VM began the Vista install. After the loading files status line completed I removed the Vista disk and inserted the Win95 Disc. Now I get a message that a required CD/DVD device driver is missing. Did I remove the Vista disc to soon? When should it be removed and the Win95 disc inserted?

Les

You can't install Windows 95 in the middle of a Windows Vista installation. Why are you trying to do that?

edit: Oh wait a minute...that's the only "bootable" disc you have right? You need a disc or diskette that will just boot to a DOS prompt that includes CD-ROM drivers so you can access the installation CD from a DOS prompt. Also if memory serves me, you'll need to create and format a partition with that boot disc to install the OS to. I don't think those older versions of Windows will do that themselves during installation.

I have an old Windows 98 boot disc that I use for that function. But any one will do.

MSU

Misunderstood what you posted in #23. I'm about ready to give up on this project. Doesn't seem to be any way I can get 95 or 98 installed from my upgrade discs. Thanks for your help Mark.

Les

Sure there is, Win95 may be a bit sketchy (I had trouble with that) but Win98 should be no problem. Every OS I have, except for Win 3.1 and Win 7 and various Linux distro's are upgrades. That would be Win 95, 98, 98SE, ME and Vista are all upgrades. All have been used only for clean installs. And all have been used in a VM. You just need to work out the boot disc thing. Like I said in my previous post, I use an old Win98 boot disc I've had for years. But anything as long as it loads CD-ROM drivers and gets you to a DOS prompt will do.

edit: Here's a place I just found that you can download ISO's for various boot discs. Try the 8th one down. That's what mine is.

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

MSU

OK. I've decided to go with Win98. Went through the boot sequence and drive setup. I get to an A prompt and I'm stuck there. How do I get Win98 installed into the VM?

I presume the VM is recognizing the boot disc (DVD) as drive a.

Les

Sort of. It's seeing a RAM drive that the boot disc setup as your a: drive. Take out the boot disc and put the Win98 upgrade/install disc in. Type "d:" and hit "enter", then type "setup" and hit "enter". You should be on your way then. When it asks for a previous version of Windows, take out the Win98 disc, put in your Win95 disc and it will use that as verification. Don't swap them back until it asks for the Win98 disc.

For some reason I thought you were familiar with all the old DOS stuff.

MSU

I somewhat familiar with DOS but it was taking some experimenting to remember some of it. I figured out that the DVD drive is E and the dir shows setup exe on it with the Win98 disc in. When I enter setup it starts a system scan which gets me the following window:

Please wait while setup initializes
Scanning System Registry
Windows setup requires 7340032 bytes available on yo

and it freezes there.

I have base memory set at 3562 MB.

Les

Damn dude, I don't know what else to tell you. It looks like you got the whole boot disc and install disc thing sorted out. I don't know why the install chokes.

Another possibility...there was a version of MS Virtual PC a few years ago that was totally separate from the OS (didn't require a certain version of Windows 7, in fact it was before Windows 7 was out). I used it on Vista. I'll look around and see if it can still be downloaded somewhere. Maybe give it a try.

edit: OK, it's still available it's called MS Virtual PC 2007. It doesn't list Windows 7 as being supported. But then again it was out before Windows 7 and Win7 has it's own version. Couldn't hurt to give it a shot. Here's the link.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24439

It doesn't list anything before XP as a guest OS either, but I was using it for the same old OS's I'm running now.


edit 2: I know it says "update", but the download link from the main page takes you there. I'm taking it as it's already been updated to the service pack and not just a file to update it. If you get my drift.

MSU

I found this one. I think it's the older one your referring to.

Windows Virtual PC 6.1.7600.16393 / SP1 6.0.192.0
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/Microsoft-Virtual-PC.shtml

Not what I thought. Same as the other one mark linked to.

Went searching all my programs and I found it. I still have the original one that runs on XP. Let me know if you want me to send it to you.
It's called "Microsoft Virtual PC" its about 35 megs large.

This could do it.

Is that Virtual PC 2004? It has to be, that's the only other version there is. He's running Windows 7 not XP though. If he's going to try it he should use VPC 2007. I know for a fact that it works on Vista. And Win7 is a very close relative.

MSU

I give up. Guess the computer gods don't want me to play some of my old games. MS Virtual PC wouldn't work either. I've uninstalled the Oracle vm so I'll reinstall it and try again but I'm getting discouraged.

Les

Attachment #1, (jpg file)

There's got to be something we're missing. But it's sometimes really hard to troubleshoot remotely

MSU

Thanks again Mark and Mike for all your help. I may still play around with this but I'm at a loss as to what the problem is. I may give it a try on my other machine with the Win8 release preview on it.

Les

MSU

I'm on my Windows 8 machine now and installed the Oracle VM. All went well till the system scan and it froze in the exact same place as on my Windows 7 machine. Even had the incomplete sentence.

Les

Those games you mentioned in your original post. Aren't they games for DOS and Windows? I have several old games here like that. You could run the "install" file in DOS and play them in DOS or run the "setup" file in Windows and play them in Windows. If that's the case and you're really intent on playing them then give D-fend Reloaded (or DOSBox) a shot and install them as DOS games. That way you're not dealing with an OS in a VM. Like I said earlier, D-fend Reloaded is a front-end for DOSBox that makes thing much easier to configure.

MSU

A couple are DOS but most are Win95. I'll try the DOS thing to see what happens.

Les

I'd bet that several of those "Win95" games also have DOS installations available. That was still a bit of a transition period for games.

MSU

I think the computer gods are conspiring to keep me from playing my old games. Problems on this machine are documented above. Couldn't figure out how to get the dos thing working, so sez I, I'll just show this situation I'm not to be trifled with.

I have an empty hard drive in my other computer so I disconnected the hard drive with Win8 on it and prepared to install Win98 on the empty drive. Put in the Win98 boot disc and hit the power switch. Booted up and selected start with cdrom support. Finished booting and spotted "device driver not found: 'MSCD001'. No valid CDROM device drivers selected. Can't run the Win98 install without a CDROM.

Must be time to admit defeat.

Les

It won't work that way, the drivers have to be loaded during the boot process.

MSU

Les, I've told you several times already in this thread that those OS disc's you have are not bootable. And that you have to use either a bootable CD-ROM or bootable floppy disk. And that either one has to have drivers on them for a CD-ROM drive. In my post #30 I even provided you a link to various ISO's of bootable CD-ROM's. I thought you had used one from what you indicated in you posts #31 and #33. The boot disc isn't just for use in a VM.

MSU

Your right in order to install Win95-98 you needed to boot from a floppy and the floppy loaded the Cdrom Driver. There where also dos utilities on the floppy for partitioning and copying etc.

MSU

Re-read my post Mark. I put in the boot disc and booted up to the A:\ prompt and at that point the Win95 Update disc would not work because there was no CDROM driver. I've seen references to the MSCD001 missing driver but have not found a work around.

Les

Sorry buddy, where you said

MSU

Mornin Mark. I'm using the disk from the link you gave me. Even tried a couple other of the boot discs. Also hooked up another CD drive and still no joy in Mudville. There are no IDE connections on my motherboard (they're all SATA). Seems like I'm getting shot down from all directions. Thanks again for helping

Les

Doh! That's it! I'm so sorry, I never thought to ask that. The CD-ROM drivers from the Win98 boot disc won't work with SATA, only IDE. The old Windows VM's I have were all made before I had a SATA optical drive. So it never dawned on me. I just have them saved on a seperate HD and when I upgrade my OS or reinstall I simply use the same VM's that I created a long time ago. Damn, all this effort for nothing. I have used the Win98 boot disc recently on another computer...but it was all IDE.

MSU

Would this work?

http://hddguru.com/software/2006.02.10-Magic-Boot-Disk/

I don't know, but I'm going to find out. It does say that it's based on the Win98 boot disc and supports SATA CD-ROM's so...

MSU

Well shoot, I was pretty excited about that image. I guess it's a case of "your mileage may vary". I tried it on my all SATA system and it couldn't find a CD-ROM to load drivers for.

edit: I did save both the CD image and floppy creator for possible future use though.

MSU

You got me thinking Bob, so I went searching. I found one that works on my system. It can be found here .

It's the 9th link down that reads "Boot CD – Win 98SE boot CD with internal SATA CD-ROM\DVD-ROM support (USA) (7-Jun-2009)".

In the BIOS your SATA controller can't be set to AHCI, it has to be set for IDE (setting it for IDE doesn't work for the regular Win98 boot disc or the one you linked to though, I guess because it is still an SATA drive).

Give it a shot Les


edit: It tries loading about 7 or 8 different drivers, most of them don't work, but one does

MSU

Yippeee Yi Ky Yay!! We're making headway. Still have a snag though. Run setup from the Win98SE Upgrade disc and it starts a system scan. Press enter to continue gets me the following:

Please wait while setup initializes.
Scanning system registry.
Windows setup requires 7340032 bytes available on your C: drive.
E:\>_

And it freezes there. It's the exact same thing that happened when trying to install Win98 in the VM program. Can't initiate any format action from the boot disc or the Windows install disc. The cursor is blinking but cannot type anything. I'm stuck once again.

Les

As Clint Eastwood would say this is turning into a cluster. I formatted the hard drive from my Win8. I increased the file size to 8K+ but the only file type available is NTFS so I went ahead with the format. The Win98 install now gets past the freeze during scanning but now says it can't use NTFS and I need to create a DOS partition. However the setup freezes again. Reboot from the boot disc and the Win98 update disc but can't find any way to create a DOS partition or change the file system to FAT. Win98 won't begin the install so there is no way to format or create partitions.

Les

Try using a third party program like 'parted' to format as FAT32. If you have a Linux disk it should have the capability. Failing that, download Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) to accomplish this.

Dave

Agreed, he needs to get it formated as FAT32. Then just use the boot CD to gain CD-ROM support to run the Windows install disc.

MSU

You can't create a partition or format one from the Win98 install disc. See what Dave said below.

MSU

Well y'all once again thanks for the help and following along with this project. I've been unable to get anything to run so far. Installed Win VISTA to see if it would work but got the same errors I got with Win8 and Win7. All my hardware in both computers is pretty new and I'm guessing that SATA hard drives are formatted to NTFS and I can't change it so I can't get Win95 or 98 to run even in a VM. Did get a game called QIN to run in VISTA but it was in a really small window.

This morning I formatted the drive and installed Win XP to see if the games will run and now can't get an internet connection to work. I'm hard wired to the router with that machine and every other OS has connected with no problem. Don't know what's going on with the XP setup. The motherboards don't have IDE connectors so I can't put in an older hard drive either. I had a couple of old machines that I gave to Good Will just a few months ago and I cleaned out my junk drawers and boxes of old cards and whatnot. Guess I should have kept em.

Les

Guess you need to go to Goodwill and see if you can buy some stuff back

Every hardwired system I've had after Win95 connected to the internet with no problem as long as the drivers for the ethernet controller were installed. And I believe since XP they've even been installed automatically by the OS. Check in device manager that everything is functioning properly.

MSU

Another DOH moment. I was fiddling around with it and the proverbial light came on...... I stuck in the motherboard setup disc, installed the right driver and voila! I gots internets now. Onward and upward.

Les

Doh!

MSU

Les,

I believe none of the Microsoft tools will format a large drive as FAT32, and will only do NTFS. However, most third-party programs will allow for FAT32 formatting. I know, because I occasionally do this. Try the suggestion I made earlier, and don't try to format with any of the Microsoft tools.

Dave

Thanks Dave. I did install the ultimate boot disc but all I could get was "you need administrator privileges to run this program" even after setting security to full control for everything. I've given it up as a lost cause and will try the games in XP. If they work, fine, if they don't they will go to Good Will. I do appreciate your help and suggestions though but the project has gone beyond my capabilities and desire.

Les

Don't install the UBD software. Download the bootable disk and boot from it. This will have nothing to do with Windows.

Dave

Thanks Dave. I've given up on the project and have XP up and running with Outlook Express which I want to use again due to it's capability to do stationery and embed sounds.

Are you interested in some old games? I've tried installing them but they either crash or won't install at all. Kind of hate to take them to Good Will if some of you computer guys would be interested in them. If there is interest I'll post up a list of the games and some of the guide books I have.

Les

Post a list, you never know.

MSU

A list of games. If interested PM me.

Obsidian - Win95
Tex Murphy Under A Killing Moon - MS-DOS ver.
Tex Murphy Overseer - Win95 has DVD and CD-ROM ver.
(Tex Murphy series were interesting because they used live actors)
Zork Nemesis - Win95 or DOS - w/guide book.

Leisure Suit Larry games:
Shape Up Or Ship Out - DOS
Love For Sail - Win95 or 3.1 - w/guide book.
Greatest Hits - DOS or Win 3.1


Lighthouse The Dark Being - Win95 or 3.1
RAMA - Win95 or DOS - w/guide book
QIN - Win95 or 3.1

These are all role playing/puzzle games with good graphics.

Les

Thanks, any of the ones I'd be interested in I already have.

MSU

Thanks for the offer, but I've never been a games person. The only game I've ever played on a computer, outside of Solitaire and Tetris, is an old DOS game called Lemmings. It was comical, interesting, and just plain fun. I would someday like to find it again.

Dave