So, long story short, there is NOTHING really wrong with Win98, the problem is that VirtualBox's emulated BIOS doesn't fully match up with what Win98 expects a real ACPI BIOS to look like, so by default Win98 will not install ACPI support (and unfortunately, the older APM support doesn't handle CPU IDLE, so we get problems). In some cases enabling or disabling AMD-V/VT-x can help you install the O.S.įor this tutorial, I presume, that you are able to install the OS.Ĭontrary to what you may have read here in some of the other VirtualBox Win98 threads, this is NOT because Win98se is a poorly written piece of antiquated crap that doesn't even know how to properly handle CPU IDLE.īack when a lot of todays young Linux geeks were still pooping their dipiys, Win98 was already supporting ACPI functions to create greener PCs and help keep laptops from running down their batteries in 10 minutes (which is exactly what DID happen to me the first time I installed Linux on a laptop that was working FINE in Win98). (There are workarounds, that allow Win 9x run on modern physical systems, but I won't go into detail here) So if you're newbie, you should use Windows 98 SE bootable CD.Īdditionally I strongly suggest to limit system RAM to 512 MB for those OSes. Official bootable CD media is starting from 98SE. Most CD-ROMs available for Windows 95/98 are not bootable, which means, that you must boot from DOS floppy, install DOS first and only then install Windows 95/98.

Installation - I won't cover here in detail, except few points. Since this is now became a common request by many, I decided to write a tutorial about Windows 9x (95/98/98SE/Me) usage on VirtualBox.įorenote: Windows 9x is not officially supported by VirtualBox team, which means, that it lacks Guest VM Additions, and it runs slowly, because VirtualBox is not optimized to run Win 9x.ġ.

Windows 98 virtualbox image