VirtualBox Emulation - antonizoon/antonizoon.github.io GitHub Wiki

For most operating systems, VirtualBox works out of the box. However, a few of them may need tweaking for best performance.

Windows 95

Intel 440DX Chipset Driver

For better performance, install this Intel Chipset driver for the CPU that VMWare emulates. You should do this before installing the Sound Card Driver.

Enable Sound Card

Newer versions of VMWare emulate a different sound card than the one this image was designed for. Nevertheless, you can install the right one from here.

Windows 98 SE

Windows 98SE is probably the more stable of the Win9x series of operating systems. Whereas Windows ME was hated for it's instability and lack of real-mode DOS, and Windows 95 lacks much

The best way to run Windows 98SE is to actually have a Pentium III or 486 PC.

Otherwise, the best way to emulate Windows is to use VMWare Player (runs on Windows or Linux). This offers hands down the best support for Windows 9x. VMWare Player is free to use.

Install Windows 98SE in VMWare

First, obtain a Windows 98SE disc or ISO from someplace.

Then, just pop it into VMWare's emulated disc drive, and run a typical Windows 98SE setup. Once setup is complete, move to the next step.

Install VMWare Tools

VMWare Tools are drivers that make it much easier to interact with the virtual machine. It adds an improved display driver, an integrated mouse (which you can disable at will for some games), and USB 2.0 support, for joystick passthrough or such.

Install DirectX 9.0

DirectX 9.0 is a critically important graphics library used by most Windows 9x games.

https://my.owndrive.com/public.php?service=files&t=e88b1f16c01d5569e7875ec7a086d063&download&file/directx_9c_redist.exe

Enable Sound Card Driver

Note: You must install DirectX 9 before installing this sound card driver, otherwise you will get NTKERN.DLL errors.

VMWare emulates a Creative sound card, so you need to install the drivers for it.

http://www.compdigitec.com/labs/2010/02/27/sound-in-windows-98-on-vmware/

Remove Internet Explorer 5

Note: This may increase system instability, so don't do it if you need compatibility.

One of the most controversial additions to Windows 98SE was Internet Explorer. Microsoft even welded the browser into the File Manager, which caused no end of slowdown during initial adoption.

The bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows eventually killed Netscape and cemented Microsoft's dominance of the Internet and major web standards. This appalling abuse of monopoly led to a successful antitrust lawsuit by the US Government.

But of course, all that is in the past. What matters to us now is this:

Internet Explorer 5 won't load web pages well.

It goes without saying that modern web pages will look like junk on old browsers. The alternative is to install Firefox 2, which also struggles, but at least functions.

Windows Explorer with WebView sucks and is slow. And who uses Active Desktop, anyway?

This requires the help of IEradicator, which completely removes the WebView Explorer and replaces it with the ordinary one.

http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html

Not to worry, the MSHTML engine is left intact for Outlook Express and other HTML applications to use. Though you if you need a library such as thumbsvw.dll, install them from here.