Virtual PC 2004/2007 worked fine for me for years.
I ran it on both Windows XP SP2/SP3. Guests were ranging from DOS+WfW, OS/2 Warp to Vista. Edit: Win Me included.

Since it's Freeware now, I can send you my backup copy of Virtual PC, if it can help you.
This shouldn't be against the rules, I guess.

I've downloaded it from the official Microsoft servers, including the patches and the 64-Bit version of Virtual PC 2007.

Edit: A stumbling stone might be hardware-assisted virtualization.
It fixes Win32s on Windows 3.1x, but makes Windows 9x unstable (in VPC).
It also crashes certain PCs upon activation.

The expiration date issue might be related to the guest.
Maybe that VM was a beta version of Me, in order to not break rules of distribution.

The last Vmware Player I tested on XP was "VMware-player-6.0.7-2844087.exe". You are much better off with vmware. I say that as someone who used VPC from the beginning.
Vmware workstation is v7.1.6 for a 32bit cpu, 10.0.7 needs a 64bit cpu.
You may run into an edge case where the emulated S3 video card in VPC works for something that the vmware one does not but it's extremely rare.
Note that 9x guests are superior on pcem for graphics since it has 3D acceleration. The minimum for vmware for 3d acceleration is Windows 2000.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-01-12, 18:59:

Virtual PC 2004/2007 worked fine for me for years. I ran it on both Windows XP SP2/SP3. Guests were ranging from DOS+WfW, OS/2 W […]
Show full quote

Virtual PC 2004/2007 worked fine for me for years.
I ran it on both Windows XP SP2/SP3. Guests were ranging from DOS+WfW, OS/2 Warp to Vista. Edit: Win Me included.

Since it's Freeware now, I can send you my backup copy of Virtual PC, if it can help you.
This shouldn't be against the rules, I guess.

I've downloaded it from the official Microsoft servers, including the patches and the 64-Bit version of Virtual PC 2007.

Edit: A stumbling stone might be hardware-assisted virtualization.
It fixes Win32s on Windows 3.1x, but makes Windows 9x unstable (in VPC).
It also crashes certain PCs upon activation.

The expiration date issue might be related to the guest.
Maybe that VM was a beta version of Me, in order to not break rules of distribution.

I finally found a VPC that worked which was VPC 2004 but the sound makes farting noises when turning it on and any sound plays on a Win9X install either fresh or a downloaded VM.

Mister98XPee wrote on 2023-01-23, 05:54:

Jo22 wrote on 2023-01-12, 18:59:

Virtual PC 2004/2007 worked fine for me for years. I ran it on both Windows XP SP2/SP3. Guests were ranging from DOS+WfW, OS/2 W […]
Show full quote

Virtual PC 2004/2007 worked fine for me for years.
I ran it on both Windows XP SP2/SP3. Guests were ranging from DOS+WfW, OS/2 Warp to Vista. Edit: Win Me included.

Since it's Freeware now, I can send you my backup copy of Virtual PC, if it can help you.
This shouldn't be against the rules, I guess.

I've downloaded it from the official Microsoft servers, including the patches and the 64-Bit version of Virtual PC 2007.

Edit: A stumbling stone might be hardware-assisted virtualization.
It fixes Win32s on Windows 3.1x, but makes Windows 9x unstable (in VPC).
It also crashes certain PCs upon activation.

The expiration date issue might be related to the guest.
Maybe that VM was a beta version of Me, in order to not break rules of distribution.

I finally found a VPC that worked which was VPC 2004 but the sound makes farting noises when turning it on and any sound plays on a Win9X install either fresh or a downloaded VM.

Glad to hear! 😁 Err, not the farting noise, of course. If you like, I send you a PM to a backup of my Virtual PC collection (VPC 2004/2007, patches, drivers, documents etc).
Free and legal stuff only, of course. All the commercial releases aren't useful, anyway, since they are from the 90s and incompatible with Windows.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-01-23, 06:04:

Mister98XPee wrote on 2023-01-23, 05:54:

Jo22 wrote on 2023-01-12, 18:59:

Virtual PC 2004/2007 worked fine for me for years. I ran it on both Windows XP SP2/SP3. Guests were ranging from DOS+WfW, OS/2 W […]
Show full quote

Virtual PC 2004/2007 worked fine for me for years.
I ran it on both Windows XP SP2/SP3. Guests were ranging from DOS+WfW, OS/2 Warp to Vista. Edit: Win Me included.

Since it's Freeware now, I can send you my backup copy of Virtual PC, if it can help you.
This shouldn't be against the rules, I guess.

I've downloaded it from the official Microsoft servers, including the patches and the 64-Bit version of Virtual PC 2007.

Edit: A stumbling stone might be hardware-assisted virtualization.
It fixes Win32s on Windows 3.1x, but makes Windows 9x unstable (in VPC).
It also crashes certain PCs upon activation.

The expiration date issue might be related to the guest.
Maybe that VM was a beta version of Me, in order to not break rules of distribution.

I finally found a VPC that worked which was VPC 2004 but the sound makes farting noises when turning it on and any sound plays on a Win9X install either fresh or a downloaded VM.

Glad to hear! 😁 Err, not the farting noise, of course. If you like, I send you a PM to a backup of my Virtual PC collection (VPC 2004/2007, patches, drivers, documents etc).
Free and legal stuff only, of course. All the commercial releases aren't useful, anyway, since they are from the 90s and incompatible with Windows.

Thanks! When you send it I'll try that on the laptop next chance I get to to see how that goes and also try the VMware route to see which is better for running Land Before Time Activity Center and/or Sim Copter. Virtual Machines just crash on the laptop where they work a lot better on the desktop. Weird. I think Dell has some kind of weird way of pointing things to addresses on their older laptops that the desktops don't have.

I've been using VPC2007 right up until a few weeks ago when I finally switched to Windows 10 from 8.1. It's unfortunate that it won't run on Windows 10 as I now no longer have access to my DOS/Windows 9x/NT VMs. (I tried running VPC inside of Hyper-V but it just crashes the W81 guest OS.)

So I should switch to VMWare?