I have a windows 98 PC that I need to create a virtual machine from.
I used CloneZilla to create an image and then restored that image into a blank VM in Player.
I am able to boot the VM now, but that is where the fun stops. I am plagued by an inability to get the drivers functional.
When I first boot, windows detects a bunch of new hardware and starts installing drivers, and eventually tells me I need to reboot. If I allow the VM to reboot, then it comes back to the windows 98 loading screen, and just hangs there forever.
So then I reset the VM, and boot into safe mode, and that works- windows 98 loads into safe mode and I can do some stuff, but not much.
The only way that I have found from this point to be able to boot again without safe mode is to delete a certain key from the registry.
The key in question is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/ENUMS/ROOT/*PNP0C08
The device associated with this key is "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) BIOS".
If I delete this key and reboot, I can get back into windows without safe mode, but I'm essentially back at square one. None of my drivers are installed, I go through the add hardware wizard it picks up a dozen or more devices (one of which is the ACPI) installs them and then says I need to reboot. If I reboot, I go back to the situation where it just spins forever on the windows 98 loading screen.
Basically it seems that this APCI issue is preventing all other drivers from getting installed. That means I can't insert a floppy, I can't load a CD/DVD I can't connect to the internet or network, I can't install the integration features, I basically can't do anything of any use.
I've tried coming at this from various angles, but none of them really get me anywhere except back to square one- no drivers installed, and if I install anything and reboot, then windows just hangs at the loading screen. I've tried incremental loading, always fails immediately after l allow it to load vserver.vxd. I've tried using logging, then resetting, rebooting in safe mode and reviewing the log. In this case the log is filled with a bunch of font load failures, but that's about all I can see that is abnormal. The fonts do not fail if I remove that registry key and reboot again with logging enabled, so I have no idea how that factors into this issue, or if it even does.
There has just GOT to be some way for me to clone a functional windows 98 machine into a virtual machine, and I'm hoping that someone here has the know-how to get me pointed in the right direction.
