Windows 95 VM

I don't usually have a lot of problems running older games in Windows. Most of the time dgvoodoo fixes the worst ones (like Blood 2. Messy as fuck game to run without it)

There's a handful of older games from around 95-ish that I want to run though that run terribly regardless of what I try to do. And some that just run faster entirely because of the processor's clock speed. At that point I'm pretty much forced to emulate.

Problem there is there are games out there that only work on 95 natively. Is it a bigger pain that setting up a 98 VM? I've done that before without a lot of bullshit.

Try VMware Player instead. I've made a 98 VM in that.
vmware.com/products/player/playerpro-evaluation.html

2nd this…

or install Vista and run a WindowsME VM and watch the world implode

virt-manager.org/

VMware Player will work fine for Windows 98. I've done it before, and used it to run some games on it that don't like modern Windows OS's. This is the route I would suggest OP go with.

For Windows 95, there's a known issue in VMware Player where the installer will suddenly be unable to detect the virtual CD drive halfway through the installation process. There are guides out there to help resolve this but I've never been able to follow them through successfully.

If you need the disc images, there's a website called WinWorldPC that has everything from the pre-XP days up for download, including Win98, 95 and 3.1. They also have DOS, CP/M, and OS/2, as well as old applications and games for all of them.

because there's no drivers on win95/98 for virtualbox stuff

you will have to torture yourself with software mode where you could use directx or opengl

How about QEMU?

lol op is full of shit. PC gaming has 100% backwards compatibility. Can't say that about consoles. Stop shilling ;)

I've tried VMware player but there's one huge issue I have with it.

It doesn't allow me to stretch the OS's screen. This is a huge problem since most of these games do run at like 640x480 or 800x600 natively. So it appears as a small black box in the middle of my screen.

This also occurs with Virtual Box but Virtual Box has a scaling feature you can use with a hotkey.

Once you get into things like older games using really old versions of Direct X you start having problems where you need to start using things like dgvoodoo to fix them.

Dgvoodoo has been my silver bullet toward fixing games without needing a VM for them but I've run into games that I do need to run in an older OS now because they shit the bed regardless of what I do.

I don't recall having that issue with VMware player. Are you sure that's not a setting you can change somewhere?

I've looked it up but every solution I've found has told me either to just increase the resolution, or to find a setting that "scales the guest OS". But I'm assuming this setting is related to VMware workstation and not Player. Since that setting isn't in my options menu.

Windows 2000 can play all old games and run much better than 95 and XP.

Using VM you need to install guest additions or vmware tools in the os.

Which is what I did. But my applications still appear in their native resolution rather than stretched to full screen.

Can confirm if I install Workstation there is a setting related to stretching the OS's screen

...

you might need a lot of per application patches, this isn't a vm specific problem.

No it's a VM specific problem.

I managed to fix this issue by not using VMware player. VMware workstation has a specific function to stretch the picture. Which is what fixed it.

That's odd. I was trying to do the exact same thing only yesterday.

You can use virtual box but I wouldn't bother, they say for playing games an emulator like PCEM is better than virtualisation, that's what I'm now using.

You can search youtube for a PCEM tutorial. That should link you to the Roms you'll need. You transfer the folder full of Roms in that folder to the one in your PCEM folder.

I think the steps are:
1) Install PCEM
2) Download and transfer Roms to the PCEM Rom folder
3) Configure PCEM settings:
I'm copying a tutorial and using 'AMI WinBIOS 486' for Machine. Tseng ET4000AX for Video. i486DX2/40 for CPU. 16mb Memory. 3.5" 1.44mb floppy drives.
4) Configure Hard Discs on PCEM:
Click new on the first one you see, change sectors to 63, heads to 16, cylinders to 1024 (for 500mb storage). Save that on your main drive.
5) Configure BIOS to the same as PCEM settings. You just press delete at startup and go into the 'standard settings' and tweak the hard disk and floppy disk config to the same as the PCEM settings.
5) DL Win 95 and grab the Win 95 boot disc (winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-windows-boot-disk/95)
6) Mount those in PCEM and install. Voila. It should play games without needing to install display drivers or apply the CPU patch that you might have to do to get virtualised 95 working.

What games you playing?

i'm not seeing a fix in that picture, looks like the game is still running at 640x480

The entire picture is 1280x960 stretched to my 1920x1080 display. If I run a 640x480 resolution in VMware player it appears as a small black box

Wheras in VMware Workstation it appears stretched

Probably. I remember pirating the paid version, since the free version didn't have that feature.

Or maybe bochs.

In fact, from boch's webpage:
Not sure how well it would actually work, though.

Best classic windows theme? Best classic wangblows theme.

what VM are you using?

did you hit ctrl+enter

Obviously this one.

Every version I used before and after 2k was shit but 2k was something very special. Even the -tan is best girl

...

Install PCEM
Configure it to be some sort of Pentium with a graphics card if you want.

I have it set up running 98se, shit's pretty cash.

You might need an image of a windows 95 boot disk floppy.

I don't have any issues with it. I was playing Mechwarrior 3 inside it, which is normally tempermental, but it worked fine in pcem.

You might need a pretty powerful computer, though, I don't know. I'm running it on a workstation with an i7 and 16gb ram.

The app itself is maximized, it renders the screen at a smaller resolution

I can't even find any tutorials on how to run the thing.

The closest I found was a youtube video where a dude didn't explain anything.

Just install it in Virtualbox/VMWare nigga.

Keep in mind it has some issues, particularly when it comes to sound. I get an annoying screeching sound anytime I try booting up certain games like WinDoom, but it's not like I can't easily run Doom in a better sourceport on a new OS anyway.

Buy a used, PIII/ Athlon PC with an AGP graphics card.

Ah, yeah, it's a bit of a pain in the ass. Helps if you're familiar with slogging through ancient hardware already.

First you gobba find and download all the ROM files for all the various PC pieces
Here's a link: sendspace.com/file/e4sw15
Then extract the whole rom folder into your PCEM directory and merge it with the existing rom folder.

Then go Settings>Configure
and set the machine to something like the Award 430VX PCI, pick some kind of pentium processor, a video card, sound card, etc.

Then when you restart, it should boot to the bios of that kind of computer you picked. But is that shit over? No. You don't have any hard drives yet, only virtual floppy drives.

Go Disc>Configure Hard Discs.

Under C: click New. Pick a name, I doubt it matters. Set it to have 63 Sectors, 16 heads, and however many cylinders it takes to get as much drive space as you want. maybe like 4000 to get 2gb. Make one of the other hard discs a CD-ROM.

Now go into BIOS, set your boot order to boot from CD first, then HDD, load your Windows 98 disc image into the virtual CD drive, and futz with it until you get it to install windows 98.

Good luck

You need VBE9X or SciTech Display Doctor.

Some games don't work on XP, that's the whole point.

Building from scratch is pretty fun if you're into that sort of thing. I used Qemu to install the OSes and disk mounting software + nocd patches for games, so I still haven't even needed a CD or floppy drive.