Microsoft’s Windows 95 was a huge leap from. It was the first release of Windows with the Start menu, taskbar, and typical Windows desktop interface we still use today. Windows 95 won’t work on modern PC hardware, but you can still install it in a virtual machine and relive those glory days. RELATED: This may be useful if you want to play an old game that doesn’t work in, although Windows 98 may be more ideal for Windows 9x-era games. Or you could just do it for a little kick of nostalgia. We wouldn’t blame you.
What You’ll Need You’ll need two things for this: A Windows 95 ISO file and a Windows 95 boot disk image. Unlike modern operating systems, the Windows 95 installation disc isn’t bootable. You must first boot into an MS-DOS environment from a Windows 95 boot disk, which would have been a floppy disk at the time, to get the installation started. If you have an old Windows 95 CD lying around, you can insert it into your PC. While ISO files of Windows 95 are available online, bear in mind that Windows 95 is still under Microsoft copyright, and can’t be legally downloaded from the web. So start digging through those old drawers of yours. Once you’ve got your Windows 95 ISO file, you can download a boot diskette image from.
You will probably just need to download the “Windows95a.img” file. Windows 95b (also known as Windows 95 OSR2) was only available to OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), so any Windows 95 disc you have lying around will either by the original Windows 95 release (also known as Windows 95 RTM) or the Windows 95a release (also known as Windows 95 OSR1), which came with Service Pack 1 installed. Step One: Create Your Virtual Machine RELATED: We’ll be doing this in, which is completely free to use and available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can do it in other programs like VMware, but the process of configuring the virtual machine software will be a little different. Once you have VirtualBox installed, click the “New” button to create a new virtual machine. Enter whatever name you like and select “Windows 95” from the Version box.
Windows 98 Boot Disk Download These are the Windows 98 boot disk images available from AllBootDisks. Download the diskette image you need, and if you need assistance creating a bootable diskette from this image, visit the how-to page.
If you name it “Windows 95”, VirtualBox will automatically choose the correct Windows version. Choose how much RAM you want to expose to your virtual machine. VirtualBox recommends 64 MB, while official Microsoft blog claims that Windows 95 won’t boot if it has more than around 480 MB of memory.
You could split the difference and safely use 256 MB, which would be more than enough for old Windows 95 applications. Continue through the wizard until you’re prompted to create your virtual hard disk. VirtualBox will automatically suggest 2.0 GB, and you probably don’t want to go over that. The retail versions of Windows 95 only support the FAT16 file system, which means they can’t use drives over 2 GB in size. Windows 95b (aka OSR2), which was only released to device manufactures and never sold at retail, does support.
So, if you were using this version of Windows 95, you could theoretically use up to 32 GB of space. Don’t boot up the machine right after you’re finished creating it. First, you’ll need to change a few settings. Right-click your Windows 95 virtual machine and select “Settings”. Click the “System” category, click the “Acceleration” tab, and uncheck “Enable VT-x/AMD-V”.
If you leave this option enabled, you’ll be able to install Windows 95, but it will just show a black screen when it boots up afterwards. Next, click the “Storage” category and select the virtual drive under the Floppy controller. Click the floppy disk button to the right of Floppy Drive and click “Choose Virtual Floppy Disk File” in the menu. Browse to the boot disk.img file and select it.
![]() ![]()
Finally, click the Empty disc drive under the IDE controller, click the disc icon to the right of Optical Drive, and click “Choose Virtual Optical DIsk File”. Browse to your Windows 95 ISO file and select it. Click “OK” to save your settings when you’re done. Step Two: Prepare Your Virtual C: Drive You can now just double-click the Windows 95 virtual machine in your library to boot it up. It will boot to a DOS prompt.
Note that the virtual machine will capture your keyboard and mouse once you click inside it, but you can press the host key—that’s the right Ctrl key on your keyboard, by default—to free your input and use your PC’s desktop normally. The key is displayed at the bottom right corner of the virtual machine window. First, you’ll need to partition the virtual drive you created.
Type the following command at the prompt and press Enter: fdisk This process is very simple. You’ll be starting with an empty drive, so you just want to create a DOS partition. That’s the default option, which is “1”.
You just need to accept the default options to go through the fdisk process. You can just press “Enter” three times after launching fdisk to create a DOS partition, create a primary partition, and agree that you want to use the maximum size of the drive and make the partition active. You’ll be told you have to restart your virtual machine before continuing. To do this, click Input Keyboard Insert Ctrl-Alt-Del in VirtualBox. Press the right Ctrl key to free your mouse first, if necessary. You’ll now need to format your new partition, which will be available in the virtual machine as the C: drive. To format it, type the following command at the A: prompt and press Enter: format c: Type Y and press Enter to agree to the format process when prompted.
You’ll then be prompted to Enter a label for the drive. You can enter whatever you like, or nothing at all. Press “Enter” afterwards to finish the process. Step Three: Launch the Windows 95 Installer You will now need to copy the files from the Windows 95 ISO file to your C: drive. Theoretically, you should just be able to run the Setup program from the disc drive itself to install Windows 95. However, this produces errors, as the disc drive isn’t mounted after the installer reboots, and the installer isn’t able to find driver files it needs.
Instead, we found it much easier to simply copy the files to the C: drive and run the installer from there. First, figure out which drive letter your disc drive was mounted as.
This is displayed when your virtual machine boots up. On our virtual machine, it’s the R: drive. If you forgot and can’t see it on your screen, you can always restart your virtual machine once again with the Ctrl+Alt+Delete option in the keyboard menu to view this info.
Run the following command to copy the files from the Windows 95 disc to your C: drive, replacing R: with whatever drive letter corresponds to your virtual disc drive. Xcopy R: C: INSTALL /S When the process is complete, you can now switch to your C: drive and launch the setup program from the INSTALL program, like so: c: cd INSTALL setup Press Enter once again to continue when prompted.
The graphical Windows 95 setup program will appear. From here on out, you can do everything graphically without messing with the DOS prompt. The actual installation process is simple. On most screens, you can accept the default options and speed through the process. You will be prompted to enter your Windows 95 product key before the installation process finishes, however. Different editions of Windows 95 require different product keys, so ensure you’re using the correct key.
When you reach the Analyzing Your Computer screen, be sure to check the “Network Adapter” and “Sound, MIDI, or Video Capture Card” options to ensure all the virtual machine’s hardware is correctly detected and configured. When you’re asked to create a Startup Disk, you can select “No, I do not want a startup disk” to continue. This isn’t 1995 and you’re not installing this on a real PC, after all. The actual installation process will be extremely quick on modern hardware, even in a virtual machine. At the end of the setup process, Windows will prompt you to reboot and tell you to remove the floppy disk from your computer. To do this, click Devices Floppy Drive Remove Disk From Virtual Drive. Click “OK” to reboot your PC and continue afterwards.
The setup process will continue setting up your hardware. You’ll be told you have to provide a name to continue, but you can enter anything you like here.
Finally, you’ll be prompted to provide your time zone and set up a printer. You can just click “Cancel” in the Add Printer Wizard window to skip configuring a printer when it appears. Finally, your PC will reboot and you’ll be prompted to create a password. You’ll then be presented with the Windows 95 desktop. You’re done—you now have a Windows 95 virtual machine. To really get back into the 90’s, open Windows Explorer from Windows 95’s Start menu and head to the C: Install Funstuff Videos folder. You’ll find music videos for Weezer’s Buddy Holly (“Weezer”) and Edie Brickell’s Good Times (“Goodtime”), which were included on the Windows 95 disc.
There’s also a movie trailer for the movie Rob Roy, which was also released in 1995. The videos in the “Highperf” folder are higher quality than the ones in the main Videos folder, so be sure to watch those—your modern PC can handle them!
Forum rules Please read the following rules before posting a download request in this area: 1. Don't post a request if you have under 10 posts as stated on the front page.
If you do anyway, it will be deleted without further notice. This also applies to other members: If you see a request by someone with less than 10 posts and it hasn't been deleted yet, please don't reply to it.
Don't request for warez or any copyrighted software. Only betas (no matter how old or new) and finals of operating systems and applications that are at least 10 years old and therefore classified as abandonware are allowed to be uploaded to and shared on the BetaArchive FTP server.
If you have your own FTP server where you'd like other members to upload what you're looking for to, please don't post its login details in any open forum as that will probably lead to abuse. Post the login details in the Private Servers section instead. Check that we don't already have the file on our FTP servers. If you don't have access to the FTP servers then ask someone who has (a moderator for example). Yes, it's not a mistake and you read it right, 30 floppies! So a long time ago I did found parts of an original Windows 95 disk set but it was missing a lot of floppies and the floppies looked suspicious. But today I have all of them (30 disks!) and one of them is the rarest of all: I name the original Windows 95 CD Boot disk.
The whole set is in french but it is to give you an idea of the file structure of the original disks and most importantly of the Boot disk. ATM I have not imaged all those floppies but here is a picture of the boot disk: Setup disks Boot floppy for setup. Windows Series High Density Floppy (1,44MB) Setup Instructions: 1. Turn off the computer 2. Insert the boot floppy into the drive A 3. Turn on the computer Here is the disk image of the boot floppy (again for reference for finding the real boot floppies in other languages) Download Complete Disk Set: - Last edited by on Fri Feb 27, 2015 11:22 am, edited 2 times in total. Judging from the boot disk, it's an updated version of the RTM.
Most files are dated August 24th, 1995, which is correct for the French RTM, but some (COMMAND.COM, and IO.SYS, just to name two) are dated May 1996. It's not an 'updated version' - non-English RTMs tend to have timestamps newer than English RTMs. Windows 98 Arabic Enabled has a timestamp '17 Sep 1998'. English RTM is '12 May 1998'.True, but it's not really possible to judge a French version of Windows based on when the Arabic versions were released, so I would say that Battler is likely correct here, especially given what he said earlier about the original French version of Windows 95 being dated August 24th, 1995. Also, from what I seem to remember, the Middle East versions of Windows at that time were always released at a later date than the English and Western European versions were, whereas the French and other Western European versions of Windows 95 were first released closer to the time that the English version was released, if I am infact remembering it correctly. Latest release of Virtual Computer emulator available here.
Also, from what I seem to remember, the Middle East versions of Windows at that time were always released at a later date than the English and Western European versions were, whereas the French and other Western European versions of Windows 95 were first released closer to the time that the English version was released, if I am infact remembering it correctly. It's not only the ME/Arabic version, other versions such like Russian tend to have different timestamp, and yes they are not that far in release date but they differ from English. However I don't own french Win95 material to compare, nor MSDN Compilations are the ones to use to compare, but what I meant is it's not an updated version, i.e. Not other than plain 950 but in different language. Just to let you know guys, the boot-disk was the only disk to have write protect disabled as MS tend to do to make their copy protection work (you know the 'this copy has already installed by' screen, and this screen does appear).
I think this is plain 950, but weirdly it comes in 30 floppies. If you want to look at the cd that was with the floppy set it is here on the ftp: /(Abandonware) Operating Systems/PC/Microsoft Windows 95B (4.00.1111) (OSR2) French (CD) OEM And surprise, there are 30 cab files But the CD is from October 1996. I also know some guys which do have a copy of plain 95 RTM in French but as said earlier in much less floppies. I will post a screenshot of all the floppies on a table when I am at home because I only have part (1) and part (3) of the floppy set where I am, the rest is at my home and luckily I did already dumped the part (2) (They came in 3 boxes, I did only have the box (2) for some time but I did have no idea that there was 30 floppies, but that was before yesterday). That's why I said they are suspicious. Where I found them it was at an IT pro office, they had many other floppies of the same manufacturer ( RPS ), If you look closely on the label, you can see it has been cut from a sticker paper (you have some dots at the top and the bottom).
One possibility is that MS offered those floppies to download and shipped the stickers (probably because it is cheaper) and then the guys of the office got some floppies, imaged them and put the stickers on them. Edit: Or the possibility you said earlier. Edit 2: This is what make me think that (look at floppy 12):.
I found something new: Look at this floppy (number 6): Looks normal isn't it? Now look at this picture taken by my phone (same floppy): Do you start to see what I'm showing? Now look at this photo with an edited contrast and color value edited: What should I look at?
I don't know if you see but there are two stickers, one, the most visible is the sticker from disk 6, behind it is the sticker from disk 7. However disk 7 does have the correct sticker so that would mean that the stickers were not shipped in one set, there was some other stickers in case you messed up the placement. Now, I think I should search again for those (If I can find them) but that will be in one month (sorry). One possibility is that MS offered those floppies to download and shipped the stickers (probably because it is cheaper) and then the guys of the office got some floppies, imaged them and put the stickers on them.
Many OEMs shipped only stickers with them, and had a floppy recovery application on their PCs that reconstructed the installation floppies, of course using any floppies you had handy. That's why these floppies are not originals but more of a 'OEM recovery' kind. I have several sheets of these stickers myself, the stickers themselves are Microsoft originals, but the floppies you recreate will never be original. Official guidelines::: Tools: Listings: Channels::. Many OEMs shipped only stickers with them, and had a floppy recovery application on their PCs that reconstructed the installation floppies, of course using any floppies you had handy. That's why these floppies are not originals but more of a 'OEM recovery' kind.
I have several sheets of these stickers myself, the stickers themselves are Microsoft originals, but the floppies you recreate will never be original. For how many disks those stickers are made? The regular 23 or 30? I wish I could find the computer with the recovery partition who made them, but unfortunately I think the computer doesn't exist anymore or it's hard-drive has been completely reformatted. One question, I can't download anything here.
But do they contain the actual official Windows Setup or some OEM reimaging files/procedure? What sort of files on say Disk 2+? Windows cab type files? Guessing this is more of a 'backup' image that may also contain OEM bundled 'enhancements' It's the official Windows Setup without any addition (just the copyright protection which has been enabled), but I'm still inspecting the installation result to see why it takes 30 disks. On Disk 2+ there are the regular cab files: precopy1.cab precopy2.cab win953.cab etc.
For how many disks those stickers are made? The regular 23 or 30? I wish I could find the computer with the recovery partition who made them, but unfortunately I think the computer doesn't exist anymore or it's hard-drive has been completely reformatted. I don't remember entirely, but I think i've seen both.
I need to go through my galleries and see if I can find it. I still have the original stickers stored away with all my floppy collections, but I did scan them before I put them away. They could even be on BA, not sure. Official guidelines::: Tools: Listings: Channels::.
Comments are closed.
|
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |