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RocknRollTim
Contributor
Contributor

Strange boot up screen when installing Windows 95 and 98

Hi there,

I was wondering whether anybody could help me, basically everytime I mount both the floppy and .ISO images for Windows 95 and Windows 98 using VMWare Workstation, it comes up with a screen as shown in the attachment, can anyone tell me what is going on? I'm really confused as to what is going on.

Thank you,

RocknRollTim

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14 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Congratulations, you found the hidden game in VMware Workstation!

Out of curiosity, what's the file size of the boot floppy image?

André

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RocknRollTim
Contributor
Contributor

@a.p. Really? I didn't know VMWare did features like this, is this feature for a limited time only? Anyway Windows Explorer is reporting that the file sizes of each boot floppy image as 0 KB which can't be right, I extracted these files from .exe files using 7-zip, have I extracted these files incorrectly?

Many thanks,

RocknRollTim

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Looks like the floppy images were not extracted properly. Floppy images usually have a size of 1.440 kB.

What's the source from where you extracted the floppy images?

André

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RocknRollTim
Contributor
Contributor

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WhiteKnight
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Nice! How do you trigger that game?

Found this on YouTube.



[VMware]: Workstation 17 Pro; --
[host]: Windows 10x64 host; --
[guests]: Windows 10x64, Windows 8x64.
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RocknRollTim
Contributor
Contributor

@WhiteKnight I triggered the game by enabling both the virtual Floppy Disk and CD-ROM drives in the virtual machines, and mounting both invaild boot floppy images and valid ISO images to the corresponding virtual drives i.e. a Floppy image for either Windows 95 or 98 displaying as 0 KB for the file size as mentioned in previous posts and an ISO image displaying the correct file size, again for Windows 95 or 98 (not SE as this works for me) and are roughly a few MBs each, hope this answers your question. Also for additional information I've got VMWare Workstation 8, not sure whether this feature is limited to a specific version of VMWare Workstation, but that's how I triggered it.

RocknRollTim

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

WhiteKnight wrote: How do you trigger that game?

It's simple, and all that is required is to boot a Virtual Machine from a zero length floppy disk image.  In other words just create a zero length file giving it the .flp file extension, assign it to the virtual floppy drive and boot the Virtual Machine from the floppy.   Nothing else matters! Smiley Wink

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RocknRollTim
Contributor
Contributor

@WoodyZ Thank you for sharing this with us, but please could someone help me troubleshoot, thank you.

RocknRollTim

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

You do not use a valid floppy image.
If you downloaded exe files - and dont have a real floppy drive - execute them inside a VM that has a blank  floppy-image connected


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

RocknRollTim wrote: @WoodyZ Thank you for sharing this with us, but please could someone help me troubleshoot, thank you.

RE: "Here are the links I downloaded the boot floppy images from."

Microsoft never distributed the Windows 95/98 Setup Diskette or Boot Diskette as a downloadable image to the general public and what you've downloaded are illegal distributions of copyrighted intellectual property owned by Microsoft and therefore it violates the VMware Community Terms of Use to help you with those files.

If you what to install Windows 95/98 then legally obtain the necessary binaries from a legal distribution point to do so.

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RocknRollTim
Contributor
Contributor

@continuum I think that's what both WoodyZ and I meant, sorry for not being very clear.

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RocknRollTim
Contributor
Contributor

@WoodyZ So I guess this link http://communities.vmware.com/message/1290301 also violates VMware Community Terms of Use as I'm not the only one who brought this subject up, unfortunately I haven't got the original boot disks anymore so I guess I'm stumped then.

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Bernd_Nowak
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Yes, you're stumped  but the thread you found gave a description what some might do. I have only quickly read it but if I would like to try it should work with the steps metionend there. If I could sleep well after following the advises from this thread is another question Smiley Wink

I remember that there was a Windows 95 version available that could be booted by a DOS 6.2 floppy and then manually started from the win95 CD. Could have been a Win95 update version.

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RocknRollTim
Contributor
Contributor

@Bernd Nowak I'll give everything a whirl and see what I can improve on, I've so far got Windows 95 to launch with several errors, however as with Windows 98 I've not even got to the installation screens yet, I've been YouTubing for the past 3 hours and have found several fixes to fix the errors I have been encountering in Windows 95 using http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYuteKsFD00 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fNWfrrf30k, I originally used this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejTD_dPI6Xk to successfully install Windows 95, but as with Windows 98 I've still got a long way to go, I'll keep you guys posted.

P.S. I didn't realise there were so many ways with installing Microsoft OSs in the Windows 9x family.

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