Middle of the road Windows 7 PC

craddy96 · 07-11-2009 10:25pm

Deano12345 wrote: »

Whats your budget ?

It would be easier to just run 7 and then run 95 in a virtual machine

windows 7 would work with one GB of ram on a virtual machine but 1GB is a little Small, with virtual machine try giving 2-3GB:D

Leman_Russ · 07-11-2009 10:46pm

I think you have it backwards, we are saying run Windows 7 as the Main os then run Windows 95 as a Virtual Machine.

kleefarr · 08-11-2009 12:04am

That's the idea. Run 7 as the main and run 95 in VB.
Will have two GB of ram and was thinking about allocating 512mb for '95 in VB.
That would be ok wouldn't it?

Deano12345 · 08-11-2009 12:10am

kleefarr wrote: »

That's the idea. Run 7 as the main and run 95 in VB.
Will have two GB of ram and was thinking about allocating 512mb for '95 in VB.
That would be ok wouldn't it?

Should be alright,W95 was hardly the worlds most demanding OS :P

Leman_Russ · 08-11-2009 1:09am

Deano12345 wrote: »

Should be alright,W95 was hardly the worlds most demanding OS :P

It was at the time

But yes, 512mb of ram for a 95 VM is fine. And you wont be running the VM all the time, just when you need it, so that 512 is used by Windows 7 when the VM is not running.

kleefarr · 03-12-2009 7:44pm

All of the gear arrived yesterday. Was a bit late ordering and had to wait a couple of days for the case as they were out of stock. Only took five days including waiting for the case. €488. Happy.

Have put it all together this afternoon and now have Windows 7 (very nice) running and updated. All systems running fine, so far.
Am about to try Virtual Box, so may be back with a couple of questions, but I have read up on the VB info, so fingers crossed.

Thanks for everything so far anyway.

Leman_Russ · 03-12-2009 8:12pm

kleefarr wrote: »

All of the gear arrived yesterday. Was a bit late ordering and had to wait a couple of days for the case as they were out of stock. Only took five days including waiting for the case. €488. Happy.
Have put it all together this afternoon and now have Windows 7 (very nice) running and updated. All systems running fine, so far.
Am about to try Virtual Box, so may be back with a couple of questions, but I have read up on the VB info, so fingers crossed.

Thanks for everything so far anyway.

Glad to hear it's all working out

Feel free to ask any VirtualBox Questions or ask for help with any problems you might have

kleefarr · 03-12-2009 11:15pm

Oh well, didn't take long to run into problems.

I seem to have installed VB ok..
VBdetails.jpg?t=1259878160

But I'm getting and couple of warnings..
VBwarnings.jpg?t=1259878256

And a fatal error..
VBCD-DVDerror.jpg?t=1259878332

I seem to have the CD/DVD mounted but can't workout why Win '95 won't install when I try via VB.

I didn't register, would that have anything to do with it?

I could also do with increasing the size of the VB disk. I can do that in settings can I?

duffman85 · 04-12-2009 12:10am

Tutorial on installing Win 95 in virtualbox:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=9072

seems like you have to install dos first.

kleefarr · 04-12-2009 5:23pm

Still not having much luck.
I have manged to increase the size of the Virtual Hard drive easily enough, but it's still not reading the CD in the drive. Have given up for the weekend and will try again Tuesday. Will need to read up on a bit more I think.

Leman_Russ · 05-12-2009 12:08am

kleefarr wrote: »

still not reading the CD in the drive.

That is your problem methinks

Download ImgBurn and convert the CD into an ISO and try and install it from the ISO file. Should be faster and less trouble prone.

kleefarr · 05-12-2009 12:30am

Was thinking just the same thing about half an hour ago. I've got Nero, that should do it.
I don't suppose it matters where I place the ISO as long as I can navigate to it via VB?

Leman_Russ · 05-12-2009 7:12am

kleefarr wrote: »

Was thinking just the same thing about half an hour ago. I've got Nero, that should do it.
I don't suppose it matters where I place the ISO as long as I can navigate to it via VB?

True. Though to keep it simple, you may as well just put it in the root folder of the C: drive.

kleefarr · 07-12-2009 7:30pm

Placed the ISO of Windows 95 in the root folder of C: and have attached the ISO to the Virtualbox VM HDD called 'Windows '95', but it still would not 'Read' when I started the VM, same error as before. (Actually had to use imgburn in the end as the Nero file ext was .nrg so not sure if that would work.)
I have made sure that the settings for the VM HDD are via SATA port 0 (also tried port 1) but no change.
Does the Virtualbox VM HDD not have to be formatted into a FAT partition as well. I know that this probably wouldn't make any difference to the VM running, but was just wondering.

I'll check the Virtualbox forums and see if I get any ideas. But if anyone has any others I would gladly try them out as I'm desperate to get this going.

Leman_Russ · 07-12-2009 7:57pm

Ya know, I just realised something...

Didn't Win95 have to be installed with Floppys, thus the Win95 disk is not actually bootable?

You'd have to copy the contents of the Win95 Disk to a folder, then select the "Create Image from Files/Folders" then under "Advanced" go to Bootable Disk, Make Image Bootable then choose a floppy emulation (the 1.44mb one IIRC), rhen use the image file from here:
http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/95.html
(Diskette Images, no idea if you need a or b, try both!) and use the ISO created from that.

kleefarr · 07-12-2009 8:10pm

The copy of Win '95b I have never used floppies when I installed it before.
But I'll look into anyway.

Would it make any difference which copy of VBox I use? Using Ver 3.0.10-54097. Maybe the newer ones aren't very good with Win '95.

Leman_Russ · 07-12-2009 8:14pm

kleefarr wrote: »

The copy of Win '95b I have never used floppies when I installed it before.
But I'll look into anyway.

Hmm, well, try recreating the bootable CD anyway and try that

kleefarr wrote: »

Would it make any difference which copy of VBox I use? Using Ver 3.0.10-54097. Maybe the newer ones aren't very good with Win '95.

Nah, it'll be the same either way.

kleefarr · 07-12-2009 8:21pm

Leman_Russ wrote: »

Hmm, well, try recreating the bootable CD anyway and try that

Just redo the iso image of the disk again you mean? Or make a new copy of the CD?

Leman_Russ · 07-12-2009 8:27pm

kleefarr wrote: »

Just redo the iso image of the disk again you mean? Or make a new copy of the CD?

Copy all the files and folders from the CD into a new folder, then create an ISO from that folder, using the 95b boot image i linked there in the "make bootable" with the floppy emulation, and see if that works.

kleefarr · 07-12-2009 8:52pm

Ok. Will try that tomorrow.
Thanks for the suggestion.

kleefarr · 08-12-2009 3:15pm

Progress is being made...

I downloaded the Windows95b.img file and then burnt it to a bootable CD. That worked then I swapped the CD for the Win 95 one and it is installing now.

Will be back with more problems later today probably.

Leman_Russ · 08-12-2009 3:41pm

Yay for l33t haxx!

Glad to hear it's working for you mate

kleefarr · 09-12-2009 12:30pm

Apart from some niggling start up problems which I can bypass, the main thing I need to sort out is the size of the VBox screen display. Is there anyway to make it bigger? It's only about 6" square.

Leman_Russ · 09-12-2009 4:24pm

What kind of start up problems?

As for window size, I think you need to set the resolution inside win 95 itself.

kleefarr · 09-12-2009 10:03pm

When starting I get the following 'Can't find files' errors..

nwredir.vxd
nscl.vxd
vredir.vxd
ndis.vxd
ndis2sup.vxd
vnetbios.vxd

My DOS problem is, when running a DOS program called VMS I get the following errors and it won't load..

ERROR DBFNTX/1001 OPEN ERROR VUTI71.DBF (DOS ERROR 5)

I checked the graphics setting in Windows 95, but there was no option to change them. I just I need to load a graphics driver in order to do that, but would the one for Windows 7/XP/Vista do I wonder. I suppose I will have to try and if it doesn't work I'll need to find one that does.
Is it straight forward to update drivers for Graphics etc in VBox?

kleefarr · 14-12-2009 12:18pm

Getting this DOS program to run is a pain. :mad:

I have dumped VBox for now and am just looking for suggestions to get the DOS program to run in Windows 7.

Any ideas guys?

kleefarr · 20-01-2010 4:58pm

Latest things I've tried and their problems..

I have installed an IDE HDD with a view to dual booting with Win 7 on the SATA HDD.
I wiped both HDDs.
Rebooted with the Win 95 start up CD in and it started loading Caldera DR-DOS, but then came up with the following error..

"System Memory Manager (EMM386.EXE) has detected an error caused by one of the device drivers or programs loaded in the system. Reboot the system, if the error reoccurs try to disable the problem driver."

As there are no programs or drivers installed on the HDDs, I went into BIOS and disabled everything that I didn't need. Same thing.

The IDE HDD I put in is set as Master. I also left the SATA HDD connected but disabled in BIOS. No change.

I have not disconnected the SATA HDD at all. Should I?
Will this even work as a dual with one HDD on IDE and the other on SATA?

If anyone can throw out any suggestions that would be worth trying , I would be grateful.

kleefarr · 20-01-2010 9:35pm

Of course, as pointed out to me by someone else, Win 95 won't like 2GB of RAM. :rolleyes:

So I'll have to find 512Mb of 240pin DDR2 PC2-5300 Unbuffered NON-ECC DDR2-667 1.8V 64Meg x 64 RAM

Anyone got a stick they can lend me for a few days?

kleefarr · 03-02-2010 11:07am

Well, the 512mb of ram didn't work.

But, progress has been made.
Having tried dual booting and Dosbox I reverted to Virtualbox, as this is what was giving the most promising results for everything tired so far.

After editing the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files I was getting the error DBFNTX/1001 which I discovered related to the files that were trying to be accessed were marked as READ ONLY. The subsequent error of course related to the file that was trying to be opened. So, after unchecking the READ ONLY box for that particular file resulted in a new file being displayed as an error. Eventually the VMS program started, but there were lots of other files that will need to be accessed that are marked as READ ONLY. So, I highlighted all 9026 files and unchecked the READ ONLY box. It took a while for the VB system to do it, but it finished successfully.

So now I have a working VMS DOS program.
My only other problems are..

1. The display size of Virtualbox. Would I be correct in assuming that in order to increase the size of the VB display, I will have to find drivers for the Win 95 display adapter and monitor?

2. The Dot Matrix printer that is to be used with this VMS program works fine in Windows 7 both via USB and optional LPT parallel printer cable. (Which needs to be connected to the Mobo onboard port as there is no LPT port on the back panel.
However, when I try to use it in VMS it says that the printer is off line.
Is there a setting in VB that corrects this? Had a look but didn't see anything obvious.

Happier so far anyway.

Middle of the road Windows 7 PC

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