Saturday, April 26, 2014

Trying to Set Up a Win95 VM

I learned today that it is more difficult than I thought to create a VM to run Windows 95 applications from a given hard drive. I need to get some old programs running, but keeping the 95 computer around is not a good option.

First, I tried ISOing the entire driving and putting it in VMWare Player. It did not work; no OS could be found. From further research, I learned that you need installation media to start a VM; boot info cannot be obtained from just the hard drive contents.

Next, I looked around for some Win95 install disc ISOs. IMG files don't work, only ISOs. Unfortunately, the only ISOs I could find on the Internet were identified as malware or had other problems that rendered them unusable. Looks like I'll need to find a real CD for 95.

Once I have that - which I don't yet - I'll be able to establish a VM from it and mount the drive image I made as a separate hard drive from which to read data.

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