Windows 98 doesn’t run on new hardware, even virtualised!

[JonathanMcEvoy]

Well, hello everyone! Since I got my new pc 1 week ago, I tried to install Windows 98 on a vm. But, it didn't seemed to work. Do you have any idea why? Personally, I don't know. But who knows. This may just be a compatibility issue after all. And it also has some pretty special payloads... 🖥 specs: Intel Core i7 11800h 8 cores 16 threads @2,3ghz 32 gb ddr4 ram 3200mhz 1 tb PCIE Gen 3 nvme ssd rtx 3080 Mobile 16 gb vram

[scott28tt]

What is in Details>> ?

[ender_]

Windows 9x has several problems on new CPUs. Try patching your install with patcher9x, it should work afterwards.

[Mongo424242]

Hi,

I am running 16.2.4 on an Unbuntu host and an Intel i5-7500 CPU.  I have a '98SE box running using hardware compatibility of "6.5-7.x" (though for some whacked-out reason, the VM summary page still says "16.2.x")...?!?  Of course, YMMV...:)

[ender_]

One of the problems Win9x has only manifests on Intel's 11th gen and newer, or AMD's Zen 2 and newer architecture. VMWare's hardware compatibility settings won't affect this.

[Mongo424242]

Well, shazzbot.  That explains why my Win98SE seems to work (the i5-7500 is, what, 10th gen?  9th Gen?).  It also means that I will have problems when I upgrade my processor... 

[JonathanMcEvoy]

Correct but at least if you use PCem on new hardware then it should run better...

https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/downloads.html

https://archive.org/details/pcem-v-17-roms

[Mongo424242]

Thanks!

[Eshin21]

You are a VMware emplee then can you please fix windows 98 showing the same eror massages it works mostly fine on Intel CPU byt not AMD Ryzen CPUs there is a fix you need to disable CD ROM Drivers to get it working in the secoend part of windows 98 SE setup so can you please fix this bug or release a patch to fix it

[Technogeezer]

---

@Eshin21 wrote:

You are a VMware emplee then can you please fix windows 98 showing the same eror massages it works mostly fine on Intel CPU byt not AMD Ryzen CPUs there is a fix you need to disable CD ROM Drivers to get it working in the secoend part of windows 98 SE setup so can you please fix this bug or release a patch to fix it

---

It is extremely unlikely that VMware will fix anything in Workstation for Windows 98. It is an unsupported guest operating system (see the VMware guest operating compatibility list) and no longer supported by Microsoft. And VMware probably isn’t going to try to fix an operating system for CPU hardware that it was never designed to work on.  

I think the best you can hope for is that user-provided patches to Win9x such as you’ll find on the Internet will make it work.