QEMU/Guests/Windows 95: Difference between revisions

Now to try to make it somewhat convenient, the installation process is split into 3 parts, it's an very involved setup procedure as Windows 95 is not stable and very painful to work with but once you get it running properly it's not too bad.

 

# Run <code>fdisk</code> and create an partition, on the first screen that prompts you whenever you want FAT32 support or not, if you're installing OSR2 hit Y, if you're installing RTM hit N. Reboot after you're done. Format the drive with <code>format C:</code>.

# Go to your newly created C:\ drive and create any folder you may wish on it where you are going to store the contents of the WIN95 folder from the Win95 installation CD. This is required to be done so the files can be patched using patcher9x. This guide assumes you have created an folder on the root of the C:\ drive called <code>95cd</code>.

# After it's done copying, navigate back to the A: drive and run the following utility called patch9x. If you run it without any parameters the program will ask you to enter the path to an existing Windows installation or an path to the Windows installation files. Proceed to write the full path to the folder with the contents with the WIN95 folder contents copied from the CD. Then in the next step select the 4th option which will unpack all of the CAB files and patch any files if needed. This can be automated by just running <code>patch9x -auto C:\95cd 4</code>.

 

Now that you've patched the Windows 95 installation files, you need to boot into the original Windows 95 boot disk in order to actually install Windows itself due to various compatibility problems which won't be listed here for the time being.

# When you have entered the Windows 95 boot disk and everything has loaded, run <code>lock C:</code> to unlock direct access to the drive. This is required as otherwise Windows 95 will fail to install.

After you've booted into the Desktop, congratulations you have made it through the first painful step of Installing Windows 95! But unfortunately, you're far from done.

 

The PCI Bus bug will strike again so to resolve it, navigate to the device manager and change the driver for the "Plug and Play BIOS" to the "PCI Bus", reboot and then let it finish installing any devices that are left.