Win98 VM on Wista Host Legecy InstallShield

[mgerbasio]

Hi,

I installed Win98 as a guest on a Vista 64bit host using VMware Workstation (latest verion, not at my PC to check). No problems. I'm trying to install software that is no longer supported, it uses InstallShield. The software loads fine on a Win98 machine, but won't load at all on a Win98 VM guest OS. I keep getting an error "isinst51" where I can only close the program and to run it again I have to reboot.

I tried booting in safe mode to install and I also uninstalled VMware Tools, still no luck. Is it possible to load this on a Win98 machine, then somehow image that machine to be a VMware guest? No support is available from the manufacturer as this software is about 10 years old. TIA.

Regards-Michael G.

[Peter_vm]

You can try to use free VMware converter to create virtual machine from your physical system.

http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/

[RDPetruska]

You can try to use free VMware converter to create virtual machine from your physical system.

That probably won't help him, as Converter does not support Win98 (or any DOS/Win9x kernel OS).

To the OP: Make sure your %TEMP% environment variable path is not too long. Also, you might try running an InstallShield Debugger.

[Peter_vm]

You can try to use free VMware converter to create virtual machine from your physical system.

That probably won't help him, as Converter does not support Win98 (or any DOS/Win9x kernel OS).

VMware Converter Release Notes contradict that statement.

Support for the following guest operating systems is Experimental. VMware Converter 3 can clone source images containing these operating systems, but the destination virtual machine may or may not work without additional configuration after import. In particular, if the source image contains unsupported hardware, you might need to modify the configuration of the destination virtual machine before using it:

Linux

Windows NT 3.x

Windows ME

Windows 98

Windows 95

MS-DOS

[RDPetruska]

Hmmm... Interesting. That's not what the Converter 3.03 Manual says.

[continuum]

IMHO Converter is completely useless for any OS that does NOT have a boot.ini - so all Win9x and Linux and BSDs and whatever.

Is it possible to load this on a Win98 machine, then somehow image that machine to be a VMware guest?

Yes - use ghost and restore the image into a VM - like you would do on a real computer.

On first boot of the ghosted Win98 - cross your fingers - often that is enough.

If that doesn't work and the VM crashes on first boot - try an inplace setup - install Win98 into the same diisk

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD: