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Monday, July 21, 2008

Windows 98 on Hyper-V

I was goofing around the other day trying to get MSDOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 working on Hyper-V. It's amazing how much I still remember about optimizing upper memory blocks. Either way, I did get WFW to go through setup but when I typed WIN it hung after the splash screen.

All fun aside, I was recently contacted by a potential client who needs an install created and tested on Windows 98! I don't know about you, but I haven't used Windows 98 in a good 6 or 7 years.

Now lately a lot has been made about Microsoft trying to kill of Windows XP, but has any one noticed how many operating systems have been killed over at MSDN Subscriber Dowloads? Windows 98 is *GONE* allegedly due to the Sun vs Microsoft Java war.

Then there is the problem that Hyper-V doesn't support Windows 98 integration components. Virtual Server 2005 is probably a better choice since it emulates an Intel 440BX/82371AB South Bridge with S3 Trio 64 video card. This is hardware that Windows 98 should be very comfortable with.

Well, here's hoping for the best. We'll see how far I get before I want to just go find an old computer off of Craigslist for this one time project.


However I'm going to give Hyper-V a try for now. I've hunted around and found a copy of Windows 98 so here's hoping for the best.

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5 comments:

  1. XavierOctober 21, 2008 at 8:37 AM

    Hey there,

    Did it work out ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Christopher PainterOctober 21, 2008 at 8:42 AM

    No, Hyper-V really didn't like Windows 98; Virtual PC was a much better fit.

    I did get it to install but then getting it to network with my windows 2008 machine was just horrible. Trying to remember all the AD policy settings to get a legacy lanman client connected wasn't worth my effort.

    In the end the customer agreed to be responsible for Win98 testing and I excluded the labor from my estimate.

    The inner geek in me wanted to figure it out but the business geek in me won the debate. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. XavierOctober 21, 2008 at 8:54 AM

    hehe :-)
    Thanks for your answer.
    Actually i have a Windows 98 on a physical machine and i want to transfer it to a virtual environment.
    I will check with virtual pc or vmware...

    Thanks Chris.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJanuary 27, 2009 at 3:41 AM

    Hi there,

    Did you have any issues with keyboard/mouse in win 3.11 setup under hyper v ?

    As soon as I get to the splash screen asking for name/product code etc I can no longer type ! :(

    thanks !

    ReplyDelete
  5. Christopher PainterJanuary 27, 2009 at 4:31 AM

    I don't recall exactly but my blog says the splash screen hung when I typed WIN so I'm assuming I didn't have any problems getting through setup.

    I'd suggest trying Virtual PC or Virtual Server.... Hyper-V doesn't really like wfw 3.11.

    ReplyDelete

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