Still Haven't Got My Windows 98 VM Up And Running

[SanAndreasEleva]

I am still at a total loss to why this won't install properly. I also realized that there isn't a whole lot of evidence of Windows 98 being installed in Workstation 14, but there is only one video on Youtube of Windows 98 First Edition being installed. So I reluctantly decided to try out Windows 98 FE (following the same instructions as in the video) and see if I would get the same result as I did in SE. I was able to get to the date & time settings and make my selections, but at some point where it says, "Windows is now setting up the following items" and Updating the system settings..." I get several error messages:

I was getting several other error messages regarding Internet Explorer 4.0 as well as several "illegal operation" messages, some of the same ones would keep popping up when I would click close. Eventually I was able to get past these messages to the point where it wants to restart the vm but when i clicked "restart now" the operating system just sat there for about 30 seconds and this message popped up:

I clicked "End Task" and whilst doing so I get more "illegal operation" messages:

The same messages would repeat when clicking close, and after clicking close several times the messages were gone but now it just sat there with a plain blue screen.

To be honest this is my second attempt at installing Windows FE and during the first attempt yesterday after getting the first batch of error messages I restarted the vm but it wanted to go into safe mode, I tried that but it just sat there and neither the taskbar nor the desktop icons would show up, which resulted in me declaring the vm a brick.

Here are my PC specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus AX370 Gaming K5

Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 Eight-Core Processor 3.00 GHz

RAM: 16 GB DDR4

SSD: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 250 GB

HDD: Seagate Barracuda SD2000DM006 2 TB

External Hard Drive (Back-up): Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8 TB (USB 3.0)

Graphics Card: ASUS GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

Host Operating System: Windows 10 Pro x64 Version 1709 (Build 16299.125)

Two-Monitor Setup: Both are ASUS VS248 Resolution is 1920x1080

Speakers: Bose Companion 5 USB 2.0

Keyboard: Logitech USB 2.0

Mouse: Microsoft USB 2.0

I know some of these specs aren't necessary to list but I did anyway just in case they may be behind the culprit of the problem.

There must be something in my PC that the Windows 98 installation doesn't like or maybe it has something to do with the Ryzen chipset, that's another thing I would like to know is if anyone has had any problems installing a Windows 98 vm on a Ryzen PC.

And for those who haven't seen my previous discussion, here are the error messages I get when I attempt to install Windows 98 SE:

So if anyone has any ideas of the culprit behind this or if anyone knows of a way around this, please let me know, keeping in mind that I have tried the following methods with the same result:

Dialing down the hardware version to Workstation 12 and Workstation 6.5-7

Setting USB compatibility to 1.1 in vm settings

Removing the USB controller

Splitting the virtual hard disk into multiple files

Reducing the hard disk size to 2 GB

Adjusting the RAM (So far I've had the RAM set to 64 MB, 256 MB, & 512 MB)

Using a different ISO from a different source

Using a different .vmx configuration file from another user

Again, any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

[creopard]

In order to use these OSes you need [...] software virtualization.

So, I guess we came to the right forum!?

Nobody's taking about installing Windows 98 on real hardware using Ryzen CPUs

As already mentioned, there's a proof-of-concept using VMware 12.5.9: Re: Windows 98 SE installation fails

Since you can't select the virtualization engine manually in VMware 15.x any more, it's just not possible there...

[Mits2020]

This is a 2 year old problem and that's the greatness of this Community!

Yes, there is plenty of evidence this is a CPU issue, however there are still plenty of workarounds to try (I never had a problem installing WIn98SE and some problems installing Win95 on old hardware hosts.)

The ones I'm thinking of:

- Never overprovision the guest - use 1 CPU, the minimum of RAM, and the oldest Hardware Version possible.

- Don't use the "new" PC (with the recent CPU) to install Win98 from scratch. Find an old PC (e.g. early Core2Duo or Pentium 4) and setup a Win98 guest there, with full updates (there is also an unofficial "last service pack" that works in an excellent way and provides proper USB support).

- Copy the working Win98 guest over to the "new" PC and attempt to boot it (without converting its hardware compatibility) and see what works and what not.

I would not give up so easily - Recently I had to salvage a Win95 installation of a PC controlling a Scanning Electron Microscope and it was a pleasure working with phys2v and v2phys - so many tools available these days for the tinkerer!

PS. I read the comments again and I saw that this is precisely what continuum​ suggested in August 2019 in Re: Still Haven't Got My Windows 98 VM Up And Running

The virtual machine download seems to still be valid at https://winworldpc.com/download/3dc3943c-c386-18c3-9a11-c3a4e284a2ef

[VP2020]

Have you tried that solution and didn't work for you? I want to try myself on your computer if you don't mind.

[antus]

"Nobody's taking about installing Windows 98 on real hardware using Ryzen CPUs"

... it depends. With vmware's virtualization, the guest OS sees the real processor and directly executes instructions on it. vmware can use amd vt-x hardware virtualization, or it can use the older slow software virtualization.

I am here because I just booted up an occasional use windows xp vm that used to work fine on my old core i7, but now I am having problems with win87em.dll general page faults, which is a problem with the 16/32 bit support on the newer processors including my Ryzen 3900x.

The solution will be either changing virtualization settings to emulate more and use less real hardware, or another virtualization software that emulates the CPU. This will be much slower, but hey its 98, even if it was 1000x slower it'd still be too fast. Something like bochs would probably do it as that emulates the CPU, but Im not ready to go that far myself, yet.

[wila]

Hi,

---

@antus wrote:

"Nobody's taking about installing Windows 98 on real hardware using Ryzen CPUs"

... it depends. With vmware's virtualization, the guest OS sees the real processor and directly executes instructions on it. vmware can use amd vt-x hardware virtualization, or it can use the older slow software virtualization.

With "older slow software virtualization" you are referring to Binary Translation?

That got axed... I wish they hadn't, but at the time they figured to not spent the time on keeping it up to date.
A quick google tells me it got removed in Workstation 14.0, which seems to match my recollection.

I'd say what would work (and will probably perform much better than you'd expect) is to install an older VMware Workstation in a guest OS in then use the BT feature of that older workstation version to run your Windows XP/Windows 98 guest OS.

--
Wil

[antus]

Yes, binary translation. Another (untested) option that just occurred to me might be to use dosbox.

[ToeJam13]

[deleted]

[MythTW]

I have exactly the same problem after upgrading my computer from i7-3960x to i9-13900k

The win98 VM that used to run smoothly just suddently not working anymore..

with error message 

The SHELL32.DLL file is linked to missing export SHLWAPI.DLL :tFileAttributesA.

I found the solution from 

https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x

Just download the floppy image, mount and boot the vm with the floppy, run the patch, reboot, all works again 🙂