Re: moving a win98 partition to a VM?

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:14:37 +0000, Chris wrote:


I want to stop dual-booting for the (very few) times I want to get into
windows, but I don't want to wipe my win98 just yet. ;)

Is there an emulator which will let me use an image of my current
installation of win98 instead of having to 're-install' it? It all is
going to be on the same box so the hardware will remain the same.

Be aware that VMWare provides "virtual" hardware, which may or may not
match the "real" hardware. The VMWare hardware uses an i440BX chipset,
IIRC.


I've had a look at VMware, Qemu and virtualbox, but can't seem to get a
definitive answer. Has anyone tried this?
TIA

Caveat: I don't run Windows 98.

A VMWare host on GNU/Linux works very well for me.

There is a new free (as in beer) download which converts physical machines
to virtual machines.
http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

I checked its specs just now, and unfortunately, I found that it does not
support W98. Before this converter tool was available, the standard
procedure was to follow this advice for Windows 2000/XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824125

The method for use with W98 appears to use Windows "hardware profiles."
Some googling shows spotty user success with W98. Here is a link
explaining "how to" use hardware profiles, etc:
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_disk_dualboot_sameos.html

Fresh Install?
From what I hear W98, W95, ME, don't age so well. They slow down over
time because of what programs have been installed. You may even have
programs which you can't remember installing, and there can be a
full "tray" of crapware which seems to "magically" appear, as if
installed behind your back. If you have too much crap-ware, viruses,
spyware, etc. you may be better off starting fresh with a clean copy of
W98 on the VM. Then when that is running, restore you files (data files
only) from the backup to the VM.

Advice:
1. Before starting, make a backup of your data to maintain a fallback
position.

2. For protection, select NAT for VMWare's network option; and run an
IPTables firewall on your GNU/Linux host.

3. There are also VMWare specific newsgroups (hosted by VMWare):
news.vmware.com

--
Ripley: And you let him in.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/quotes
.

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