can you install windows 95/98 on dosbox pure

i cant find an answer

You can get Windows 3.1 running in Dosbox. Not sure about 95/98

Up to version 3.1, Windows was technically a program that you could run on the DOS operating system. You'd type "win" in the DOS command line and Windows would start.

Windows 95 was the first version of Windows that was, in itself, an operating system. Your computer could run on DOS or Windows 95, but you couldn't run Windows 95 "inside" DOS. Hence, since there was no way to run it from DOS, you won't be able to run it from DOSBox (Pure or any other version).

Anybody, correct me if I'm overlooking something. :-)

Oh, and that said, you can totally run Windows 95 as a virtual machine!

There's a free preconfigured Win 95 VDI for VirtualBox on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/windows_95_vdi

You might want to try https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ for the old windows machine gaming stuff aswell.

Out of interest. Does anybody know if it's possible to automatically send the win command to the core without changing any contents of the game archive?

@mrmatteastwood im guessing for some games that the performance wouldn't be 100% (i know with emulators its also not 100% but there wasn't slow downs are anything)

Apparently you can install it on the Dosbox-SVN core: http://pages.retromods.org/radius/post/2020-09-05-w95-guide/

I did it. after running a bat file remount c: x: and imgmount c your img with windows on it and then boot -l c

Just for clarify - Windows 9x works under dosbox-x where you can mount disk images to an IDE controller

Works also on pure

Apparently you can install it on the Dosbox-SVN core: http://pages.retromods.org/radius/post/2020-09-05-w95-guide/

I just did that too. Installing and booting windows works fine. My issue is that I dont know how to get my games on the hdd image. The way he described on his blog didn't work for me, a lot of my files haven't been copied. Maybe because of the filenames

Apparently you can install it on the Dosbox-SVN core: http://pages.retromods.org/radius/post/2020-09-05-w95-guide/

I just did that too. Installing and booting windows works fine. My issue is that I dont know how to get my games on the hdd image. The way he described on his blog didn't work for me, a lot of my files haven't been copied. Maybe because of the filenames

You need to zip them first then unzip with 7z on your windows installation

Also you can use daemon tools 1.4 I think it is to mount games to install alternatively install on a PC first then zip the installation from the game folder

oof I tried to create those self extracting archives (exe) all day long because I thought that tools like 7zip are too new for win95. tysm now everything works as it should :)

Works also on pure

How ? I can’t find how to properly setup the boot bat file, it throws the usual "error loading operating system" stuff like with dosbox svn without using the conf file, but the conf file seems to be tied to svn

Just had to remount c to x and mount the HDD img file on x as c

On Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 6:13 PM P0liak @.***> wrote:

Works also on pure

How ? I can’t find how to properly setup the boot bat file, it throws the usual "error loading operating system" stuff like with dosbox svn without using the conf file, but the conf file seems to be tied to svn

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after running a bat file remount c: x: and imgmount c your img with windows on it and then boot -l c

@Xbox-Series-X-User - I am having problem running multiple commands in a bat files under Dosbox Pure. Could you share how you manage to get the bat file to work?

The series of commands work if I type them interactively from the shell. If I create a bat file contains the same sequence of commands: multiple mount / imgmount commands, and then open this bat file as the content for Dosbox Pure core in Retroarch, the bat file would run but it would exit after the first command in the batch file. It would not run the whole batch file. I have seen some posts about this in other dosbox fork / SVN, and the suggestions was always to use the Autoexec section in the conf file, but Dosbo Pure core does not support conf file, so I can't use the autoexec section in the conf file to do this.

Yeah it runs part of it I just run the bat twice then it works right for me my HDD died with the bat so unfortunately cannot share but off memory I just remount c to x and boot the bat from x and mount the image files as c and d

On Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 6:56 PM ckeisc @.***> wrote:

after running a bat file remount c: x: and imgmount c your img with windows on it and then boot -l c

@Xbox-Series-X-User https://github.com/Xbox-Series-X-User - I am having problem running multiple commands in a bat files under Dosbox Pure. Could you share how you manage to get the bat file to work?

If I run a bat file contains multiple mount / imgmount commands, and open this bat file as content in Dosbox Pure core, the bat file would run but it would exit after the first command in the batch file ran. It would not run the whole batch file. And Dosbo Pure code does not support conf file, so I can't use the autoexec section in the conf file to do this.

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@Xbox-Series-X-User I found a recent reddit posting that seems similar to what you're suggesting to get dosbox-x booting and running win98 games. Is this what you did?:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dosbox/comments/l71k2r/comment/h4vgaru/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I've successfully gotten win95 running decently well on dosbox-svn, so if it's truly stable running win98 on dosbox pure I will have to try this.

That comment is me. It works but it not stable

On Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 4:30 PM evbo @.***> wrote:

@Xbox-Series-X-User https://github.com/Xbox-Series-X-User I found a recent reddit posting that seems similar to what you're suggesting to get dosbox-x booting and running win98 games. Is this what you did?:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dosbox/comments/l71k2r/comment/h4vgaru/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I've successfully gotten win95 running decently well on dosbox-svn, so if it's truly stable running win98 on dosbox pure I will have to try this.

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@Xbox-Series-X-User agreed. I just used dosbox x to create and install a windows 95 HDD img.

I install directx, S3 Trio 64V+VLB drivers, voodoo drivers. I run an example Windows 95 game (EV Nova). Works.

I then run that same hdd img using dosbox pure on Retroarch running on the same desktop. Windows 95 opens but immediately the display driver is incompatible and I'm limited to 16 bit colors. I try reinstalling the S3 drivers and it correctly installs, recognizes them, but then again on restart there are display compatibility issues.

In your experience with this, did you find what worked best for display drivers running on dosbox pure? I've tried VGA, SVGA, Trio, but none seem to be compatible.

So, it seems games that can run in 16 Bit color will work, but anything higher won't work unless I'm mistaken.

I believe svga. 32 bit worked for me I think up to 800x600? On win98 at least. I've played half-life and deus ex so pretty sure 32 bit works but I did need a svga driver I will see if I can find the name

On Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 8:02 PM evbo @.***> wrote:

@Xbox-Series-X-User https://github.com/Xbox-Series-X-User agreed. I just used dosbox x to create and install a windows 95 HDD img.

I install directx, S3 Trio 64V+VLB drivers, voodoo drivers. I run an example Windows 95 game (EV Nova). Works.

I then run that same hdd img using dosbox pure on Retroarch running on the same desktop. Windows 95 opens but immediately the display driver is incompatible and I'm limited to 16 bit colors. I try reinstalling the S3 drivers and it correctly installs, recognizes them, but then again on restart there are display compatibility issues.

In your experience with this, did you find what worked best for display drivers running on dosbox pure? I've tried VGA, SVGA, Trio, but none seem to be compatible.

So, it seems games that can run in 16 Bit color will work, but anything higher won't work unless I'm mistaken.

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• Run S3trio64.exe, Sb16w95.exe
• Right click the desktop, select properties
• Go to the Settings tab
• Go to Advanced Properties

[image: alt text]

• Select Change and then Have Disk… and then Browse

• Navigate to d:\tools\s3trio64 and select s3.inf

• Select S3 Inc. Trio32/64 PCI

• restart

• You should be in 256 color mode now

• The guide I used is a dead site now had to use the way back machine

On Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 6:22 AM Scott Klitz @.***> wrote:

I believe svga. 32 bit worked for me I think up to 800x600? On win98 at least. I've played half-life and deus ex so pretty sure 32 bit works but I did need a svga driver I will see if I can find the name

On Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 8:02 PM evbo @.***> wrote:

@Xbox-Series-X-User https://github.com/Xbox-Series-X-User agreed. I just used dosbox x to create and install a windows 95 HDD img.

I install directx, S3 Trio 64V+VLB drivers, voodoo drivers. I run an example Windows 95 game (EV Nova). Works.

I then run that same hdd img using dosbox pure on Retroarch running on the same desktop. Windows 95 opens but immediately the display driver is incompatible and I'm limited to 16 bit colors. I try reinstalling the S3 drivers and it correctly installs, recognizes them, but then again on restart there are display compatibility issues.

In your experience with this, did you find what worked best for display drivers running on dosbox pure? I've tried VGA, SVGA, Trio, but none seem to be compatible.

So, it seems games that can run in 16 Bit color will work, but anything higher won't work unless I'm mistaken.

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@Xbox-Series-X-User That's exactly what I did, except I didn't choose PCI for the display. Now I've tried your steps but same results:

It works installing s3, and it says I'm getting 256 colors:

But after restart issue persists, and device manager says the devices don't work:

I've installed windows using dosbox x and then again using dosbox svn retroarch core. Did you use dosbox svn to do initial install? I think that is the only difference perhaps - what emulation was used during install.

Interested to know if you can share the link you used, even if its wayback machine. Here's what I referenced: http://dosbox95.darktraveler.com/guide%20select.html

Also, you only installed windows 98? Maybe I should try that instead. Thanks!

Update:

I thought the issue might be due to using Win 95 OSR2.5 instead of OSR1, so I tried win 98 SE and a similar issue occurred. Same approach, I followed the guide linked above but ran setup to install win 98 on dosbox svn core to match the emulated hardware perfectly. On reboot (with either svn or pure), it always says the S3 Trio hardware isn't detected. And when I first installed s3, win 98 gave me a warning:

I am running retroarch on Ubuntu 20.04 with pentium slow and 24 MB of RAM and otherwise default settings. So maybe windows cores are more stable if it worked so well for you?

dosbox-core (latest 2022 release) is a very convenient Retroarch Core that supports windows 95 wonderfully and does not suffer from the above issue when run via Retroarch on Linux!:

https://github.com/realnc/dosbox-core/issues/41#issuecomment-1046067731

It may be due to the fact that dosbox-core is using the latest version of dosbox-svn. I've noticed it is slower, but slow is better than no go! I hope the maintainers of dosbox-pure find this to be a useful reference!

I've been trying out some possible enhancements for Windows 9x support and I just played a game of HOVER! off of a ZIP file in Windows 95. Still very experimental but I wanted to share this progress somewhere :-)

I've been trying out some possible enhancements for Windows 9x support and I just played a game of HOVER! off of a ZIP file in Windows 95. Still very experimental but I wanted to share this progress somewhere :-)

Thanks for sharing <3. I haven't used retro in a bit but I was able to play half life and fallout 2 fullspeed + fast forward on. (On XSX at least) mounting zip files would be helpful for sure on file sizes. The .img files if I remember right are 2gb max

So the enhanced support for installing operating systems and running any loaded content (like ZIP files) with them has just been released as version 0.9.5. See the new release here! It should also be in the online core updater of RetroArch in a few hours.

On intel based processors this runs quite well for me. On ARM based devices like Android or Raspberry Pi the story is a bit different but I added some convenience options to help with issues as described in the documentation of the feature.

Try it out if you can and report back how things work for you. Cheers!

Thanks @schellingb - I have successfully installed Windows 98 SE and the first time use experience is great! all the HW are correctly detected, and drivers are found and installed (SB, S3 SVGA and Voodoo). I think there might be some confusion for the discard C: drive feature. First I really like the idea of it. When I install a game, most would make some changes to C: drive however minimum, from creating program group to Install / Update DirectX and other system components, even if we choose to install them to D: drive (which is the content ZIP file). 2 questions:

1. any modification to D: drive would be written back to the content ZIP file right?
2. could modification to C drive be stored in another ZIP file (like a differencing disk)? If this is not available, I suppose we would need to "unlock" the C: drive for modification each time when installing apps, and then lock it to discard trivial / unexpected modifications, correct? I think I could work with that but in generally, if not careful, a game or app could become unusable on 2nd boot when the necessary modification to C: drive was discarded.

Great work! I run Retroarch on Xbox Series console and the option to run Windows games are very limited. I was originally limited to Dosbox core fork and when Dosbox Pure supported conf file, it became possible to boot Windows 9x but the HW emulation was not good enough then. Now everything works out of box, so awesome!

Thanks for testing! Really happy to hear that things are working and that you tried the discard disk modification option, too.

So disk drives in a booted operating system inherently work different than in DOSBox's DOS environment. The emulator can only present a raw storage container with which the OS is free to do anything. For example you can just go ahead and format the D: drive, to a different file system even.

So how it works under the hood is that DOSBox Pure generates a FAT16 (or FAT32 for really big ZIP files) partition on a hard disk large enough to hold all the files + 1 GB of free space. Any change made to that hard disk by the OS is written out to a separate file which contains the raw sectors of that simulated hard disk that have been modified by the operating system.

In the Start Menu, after selecting [ Run Installed Operating System ] below the list of created hard disk images there is some green text indicating where these modifications of the D: drive are being written to. That file has some an 8 character identifier at the end of its filename which uniquely identifies the loaded content. If for example you change the content of the ZIP file in anyway, that ZIP file will end up generating a different layout of the FAT partition structure and thus the raw sector modifications made before don't apply anymore.

Now... I do like your idea in 2. Though it would mean once you start having a per-content differencing disk, it would become impossible to make changes to the original disk image. Which might be very hard to either enforce or communicate. I need to think about this... but maybe we can have a third selectable option in that "discard c: drive" core option.