Boot Windows 95 From Floppy

[bc-os]

I have a Virtual Box setup for Windows 95. I still have the old CD-ROM and the floopy disc that used to be needed to boot from CD. When I start up the VM, the first thing I get is:

Code: Select all

FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

From what I remember, Windows 95 needs to launch MSCDEX.EXE from the floppy to initiate the CD-ROM drive.
I have a USB floppy drive and the VM seems to recognize it, but the icon is grayed-out on the bottom toolbar. If I right-click on it I have an option for "MSCDEX.EXE", but when I click on it I keep getting an error message:

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Failed to open the disk image file /media/<me>/WIN_OPK/MSCDEX.EXE.

Could not get the storage format of the medium '/media/<me>/WIN_OPK/MSCDEX.EXE' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).

Result Code: VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Component: MediumWrap
Interface: IMedium {ad47ad09-787b-44ab-b343-a082a3f2dfb1}
Callee: IVirtualBox {d0a0163f-e254-4e5b-a1f2-011cf991c38d}
Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)

[ricardogroetaers]

From what I remember, Windows 95 needs to launch MSCDEX.EXE from the floppy to initiate the CD-ROM drive.

I don't understand virtual machines.
I cannot contribute in this respect.

- The boot floppy must contain an MSDOS or equivalent.
- The driver for MSDOS to recognize the optical media device (CD/DVD drive) is invoked in the config.sys file by the command "device".
- The name of the driver varies widely. An example is:
sscdrom.sys
- In this example the line in config.sys would be:
device=sscdrom.sys /d:sscd000 /v
- The mscdex.exe is a program and must be invoked in the "autoexec.bat" file by the " load" command, example:
load mscdex.exe /d:sscd000

- I don't know which version of Windows 95 you have.
The best one is Windows 95 OSR 2.5 (also called Windows 95 C). It has support for fat 32 lba.

- As the Windows 95 CD is not bootable you can copy its content (files and folders) to a FAT partition of a flash media (pen drive, memory card) or even the hard disk.
This procedure will eliminate the need to use the CD to install Windows 95.

- You can use the boot floppy to transfer the MSDOS system to a FAT partition on flash media (or to a primary, bootable FAT partition on an MBR disk).

- You can transfer the MSDOS system in two ways:
1- With the command sys:
sys a: b:
2- With the command format:
format b: /s
Where "a:" represents the source drive and "b:" represents the destination drive.
Do not interpret these letters as exact. It is just an example.
Be careful not to format the wrong drive.
- This will transfer only the core system (IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS) and the command interpreter (COMMAND.COM) and the driver for compressed disks (DRVSPACE.BIN).
The other files and drivers must be copied manually to the target drive.

- The floppy disk or flash device (USB stick, memory card) serves only to manually invoke the Windows 95 installation program. The name of this installation file varies with the language. In Brazilian Portuguese it is "instalar.exe" (which means install.exe).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[AndyMH]

Code: Select all

FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

On VB's devices menu select optical drives, then choose a disk file and point VB at the setup.exe or whatever on the floppy to install. Or you may be able point it directly at the CD.

Then on VB's machine menu - reset.

[bc-os]

Unfortunately I'm not having much luck either way. I'm very new to virtual machines. I've never actually set one up before.

On VB's devices menu select optical drives, then choose a disk file and point VB at the setup.exe or whatever on the floppy to install. Or you may be able point it directly at the CD.

Then on VB's machine menu - reset.

I tried this. I hope I did it the right way. I went to Devices->"Optical Drives"->"Choose a disk file..."
but ".exe" files do not show up by default. From the "Files of type" option at the bottom, I had to change it to "All Files (*)". Then I could point to the "setup.exe" file, but I still get:

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Failed to open the disk image file /media/<me>/W95_FULL_AR/setup.exe.

Could not get the storage format of the medium '/media/<me>/W95_FULL_AR/setup.exe' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).

Result Code: VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Component: MediumWrap
Interface: IMedium {ad47ad09-787b-44ab-b343-a082a3f2dfb1}
Callee: IVirtualBox {d0a0163f-e254-4e5b-a1f2-011cf991c38d}
Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)

[AndyMH]

I could point to the "setup.exe" file, but I still get:

Try pointing it at the CD instead and see if things get any better.

[blockhead47]

Most 95 CDs are NOT BOOTABLE. If a download does not include a boot floppy, please see Microsoft Windows Boot Disks.
https://winworldpc.com/product/microsof ... ot-disk/95

[bc-os]

So I downloaded both the "95 RTM" and "95 OSR2.x" and I'm not having luck with either. I still get the "No bootable medium found!" message.
It seems like VirtualBox is looking for a floppy image file only. The thing is, I actually have the old-school boot floppy and the original CD-ROM. When I put it in my USB floppy drive it gets recognized and a file manager window pops up and I can see all the files on disk - including the elusive "MSCDEX.EXE". VirtualBox does not see it as an image file so it errors out.

[Neil Edmond]

I didn't take the time to read the whole thing, but maybe check these instructions and see if anything useful is offered: https://www.sysnettechsolutions.com/en/ ... indows-10/

[Pierre]

I've actually Installed an win-98 from an CD .. into an VirtualBox,
some time ago .. that CD was an bootable disk, though.

in this case, you would also need to boot with the win-95 CD, as well.
as the modern Linux System no longer handles an floppy disk, very well.

https://archive.org/details/windows-95-c

[deepakdeshp]

See if this helps
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/wi ... e.1091019/

[axrusar]

sorry to be nosy. curiosity itches
what do you need win 95 for?

[rene]

You're going to need to add a floppy drive to the VM as per e.g. https://geek-university.com/oracle-virt ... ppy-drive/, then choose either your USB-drive as its backing store if possible or an image file of the floppy if needed.

An image file you'd from an actual old-style floppy drive create simply as e.g.

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dd if=/dev/fd0 of=win95.img

Not currently near a system to check but I believe most USB-floppy drives need to be accessed as e.g. /dev/sdb; dmesg | tail after connecting it shows the device name to use.

But you can as said supposedly also just connect your actual USB-floppy drive as the VM's emulated one. Again can't quickly check things right now but have definitely done this before.

[ricardogroetaers]

sorry to be nosy. curiosity itches
what do you need win 95 for?

As for the author of the topic, I don't know.
But I will not give up my Windows 95 OSR 2.5 (Windows 95 C) with no graphical interface.
For example, when Linux Mint crashes (for whatever reason), I use DOS (from Win 95) to restore the entire partition.

[Neil Edmond]

As for the author of the topic, I don't know.

Same here. But, I recently installed Win98SE in VirtualBox because I wanted to run some old DOS games. 98SE still can boot to DOS and it much easier to install than 95, because you can boot from the install ISO.

[bc-os]

sorry to be nosy. curiosity itches
what do you need win 95 for?

I don't need it exactly. It's mostly for nostalgia. The first compiler I ever used was the old Borland one - version 4.5. The IDE for it had four different color schemes.
I've used Geany for that past several years to write code. I like to make my own color schemes for it. I wanted to recreate the old Borland ones, so I thought I would install Windows 95 on a virtual machine to install the old Borland compiler and IDE.
I've never done anything with virtual machines before. I figured this would be a good beginner-level project.

[bc-os]

Also, I've come across several articles that show using "dd" to make an image file, but when I try I keep getting:

Code: Select all

dd: error reading '/media/<me>/WIN_OPK': Is a directory
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes copied, 0.000268803 s, 0.0 kB/s

[rene]

/media/<me>/WIN_OPK is not a device but a directory. See above; something like

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dd if=/dev/sdb of=win95.img

in which /dev/sdb is the correct device specifier for your USB floppy drive as per e.g. dmesg | tail right after inserting it.

[bc-os]

/media/<me>/WIN_OPK is not a device but a directory. See above; something like

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sdb of=win95.img

in which /dev/sdb is the correct device specifier for your USB floppy drive as per e.g. dmesg | tail right after inserting it.

You're right, sorry I skipped over it. I tried it the right way this time. I was able to successfully make an ".img" file of the floppy. The I pointed the VM floppy drive to that file. I'm still getting "no bootable media found" errors. Apparently I just suck at this...

I've included a couple screen shots: one to show my VM setup, the other to show the floppy disk I"m trying to use.

[rene]

The "Storage" tab would've been more directly to the point but assuming that'll be fine can only suggest that your floppy may not in fact be bootable (any more) although if this were due to damage the dd would've likely alerted you to such. In any case works fine for me so can't tell you much else; do not have a bootable Windows 95 floppy at hand but both a MS-DOS 6.22 setup floppy and the Windows 98 SE boot floppy work fine; images created as per above and also from a USB floppy drive.

Note; if/when you do get things running, beware that you will want to install e.g. https://maribu.home.xs4all.nl/zeurkous/ ... sidle.html so as to keep the VM from grabbing 100% of a single core; Windows 95 was too early for e.g. ACPI.

[bc-os]

Does this add any useful info?