So far the only one I've had success with is QEMU, but it's certainly not perfect (I only installed it for one game and it doesn't do keyboard handlers very well), nor is it very easy to use.

Both Microsoft VirtualPC and VMWare Workstation are the best VM's for running Windows 98, in that order.

and if you have a super faster processor you can use swiftshader in your guest to run DX8/9 games.

Are there even any DX8/9 games that you would VM? I've never had any problems just running anything that was made this century.

Did you read the FAQ of Virtualbox? There is no support for guest additions in Windows 9x/Me, but it states that you may use a generic VESA driver to get higher resolutions or color dephts. I've got a Windows 95 OSR2 installed that way. Also, pay attention to the "halt" note.

I had a Windows 98SE machine in VMWare, but then I switched to Virtualbox (it is easier to maintain in Linux). Windows 95 games works great in Virtualbox.

thecrankyhermit wrote:

Are there even any DX8/9 games that you would VM? I've never had any problems just running anything that was made this century.

It's a pretty small list of games. Usually only needed when games don't work on a 64bit OS or you have graphics issues with drivers.

Did you read the FAQ of Virtualbox? There is no support for guest additions in Windows 9x/Me, but it states that you may use a generic VESA driver to get higher resolutions or color dephts. I've got a Windows 95 OSR2 installed that way. Also, pay attention to the "halt" note.

I got that driver. 32-bit 1024x768 works now, but it's still horribly, horribly slow. Running "rain" didn't do a thing.

I've been trying to get GTA running, and I've tried Virtual PC, VMWare Server, and VirtualBox. All have issues.

Virtual PC:
The game actually runs, but as soon as I finish the first level, it crashes to this:

This file *does* exist. Also, this error message occurs if I try to quit normally. On my WinXP machine, if I quit normally, it quits normally, so this issue is definitely isolated to the VM.

Also, GTA UK doesn't work at all. Running it plays the intro FMV, and then it crashes to this:

VMWare Server:
Running it promptly makes it say this:

Also, I haven't figured out how to get sound working yet. It seems I need to install drivers, but I have no idea what drivers or where to get them.

VirtualBox:
Everything is horribly slow. It takes at least 10 minutes just to browse to the game's directory, and running the game makes the VM hang at a black screen.

Are you using the GTA 1 that you can download straight from Rockstar? AFAIK it works fine in Windows.

I haven't tried it, because it doesn't work with GTA London, and I want that.

Ok, just for the hell of it, I tried the Rockstar Classics version. It doesn't work either - exact same issues as in my other topic.

Ok, I figured out why the game within Virtual PC was giving me grief! Getting all three things installed was a bit of a hassle in the first place, so it seemed like the best way to get it on the VM was to take the whole installation directory, copy it to an ISO, mount the ISO to the VM, and copy everything from the ISO to the VM hard drive.

Problem is, this caused all of the files to become read-only, even after copying them to the VM hard drive. And GTA wasn't expecting some of these files to be read-only. Hence, the problems.

So I tried zipping up my installation directory and putting the zip file on the ISO instead, and unzipping into the VM hard drive. It seems to be working pretty well now.

Virtual PC has a shared folders options, you can just copy anything into the folder setup in Virtual PC, start up Virtual PC, go to that shared folder and bring in whatever file you need. I get patches and mods into Virtual PC thisa way. Also, with the latest Virtual PC, you can install the VM additions and actually have drag and drop.

Installing "VM additions" broke GTA - it made it have the same garbled graphics that it does when I just run it normally.

thecrankyhermit wrote:

Installing "VM additions" broke GTA - it made it have the same garbled graphics that it does when I just run it normally.

Well, it didn't on mine...... Such is PC gaming....! 😀

You may have to reduce video hardware acceleration in the guest for some games.

I don't see how that would help. Virtual PC with VM additions has the exact same problem as just running the game natively does. Reducing video acceleration didn't do a thing to solve the problem when I ran it natively - I can't see any reason why it would suddenly solve the problem when it runs on Virtual PC.

Are you using DirectX 8.1 or DirectX9?