There are probably "clever" ways, though I doubt they are especially pretty.

If I'm not mistaken, there are "portable" versions of VirtualBox. (The main problem with them is that there's not really any way to enable Internet access for the OS running inside the VM, but that's not important for old games anyway.) You could set up a virtual machine that could run Win9x and, on startup, execute a batch file stored on drive "D". Then you could set up different virtual machine profiles for each of your games, each of which will load the same hard drive image with the Win9x installation but a different hard drive image for drive "D". Then you could put each of your games on a different hard drive image, each having a batch file in the root directory that will start the game. Make sense?

I guess I understood this so far, but... is this really portable then and without any redundant data?

Actually run Windows 3.11 games through DOSBox. Most work fine. You need a legit copy of Windows 3.1x, though, but these come up cheap all the time (I found a couple at the salvation army for € 1,-). Then install Windows 3.11 in DOSBox (see my signature) and just play them 😀

you can also do start batches for each game via "win.com game.exe" or similar 😀

DarkTemplar wrote:

I guess I understood this so far, but... is this really portable then and without any redundant data?

Sure – there's only one installation of Win9x to worry about.

Windows 3.11 in DOSBox will work too, but of course that's not too helpful if you want to run Win9x games.

I even have an old copy of Win98 at home so this would work quite well. The other problem though are multiple instances of Win98 in each pack, that's a lot of redundant data. Would it be possible by the way to autostart Windows with a Windows game then? And how hardware-hungry is that?

You could do it the same way as for Windows 3.11. don't let Windows start automatically and instead have multiple batch files with "win.com game.exe". Again, I could be wrong, though, it's been a while 😉

DarkTemplar wrote:

The other problem though are multiple instances of Win98 in each pack, that's a lot of redundant data.

I don't think I'm making myself clear. When I said "virtual machine profile", I was referring to some tiny, tiny file that VirtualBox uses to identify the components of a virtual machine. Thus, you can have a single Win98 installation on a single hard drive image and then use that same hard drive image in multiple profiles. (The obvious catch is that of course you would not be able to have two profiles open at the same time.) Does that clear things up?

@Jorpho - That does indeed clear things up. So I have actually one image file which has a full install of Win 3.11 or Win 9x and I can mount this via D-Fend Reloaded, yes?

For Windows 3.1 x on Dosbox you don't need an image file but for Windows 95 you need some other emulator/virtualizer. On Dosbox it's not stable nor comfortable to use with CD-Roms

DarkTemplar wrote:

Is there way to set up these virtual machines in such a simple way that in the end, I only have to double click my entry in D-Fend Reloaded and the game launches?

Having never used D-Fend Reloaded before, I assumed that here you were referring to using D-Fend Reloaded to execute arbitrary commands (such as launching VirtualBox) rather than running something within DOSBox.

Don't run Windows 9x in DOSBox.

Jorpho wrote:

Don't run Windows 9x in DOSBox.

Why not? According to Taowoong's build it seems to work quite well

That's a highly modified version of Dosbox and is not really supported here.

So the best way playing old windows games is with Windows 3.1x, yes?

If you want to hold me to my word, no 😉
The best way to play Windows 3.x games is with Windows 3.x (in Dosbox)

"Though running Windows games which are designed for Windows 3.11, Windows 95 or 98 are a real pain."

I find the good old killing of explorer sorts a lot of these games out to be honest as far as displaying correctly is concerned

The problem is that most of the 16bit games for windows do not run in an Windows 7 environment (no matter if its 32 or 64bit)

Concerning the topic
I managed to play a lot of Win 3.x games lately but I run into problems when games need Windows 95 or 98. How do people resolve this without using a virtual machine?

They don't. (or to be more precise, there isn't a general principle that always works)

Many well-known games that have problems often have some kind of unofficial fix available.