Hello everyone,
I'm currently working on setting up a Windows 95 VM inside DOSBox-X for playing some old games, but mainly those awkward ein3x/win95 titles that either suck alot to make work on modern versions of Windows for a panoply of reasons or that can only run in a 640x480 window and cannot be (easily) resized/stretched (3-D Ultra Minigolf is one example among others).

Here's what I've got working so far :
-An 8GB FAT32 disk image where win95 is installed (2GB ain't enough)
-32-bit memory and file access
-Windows 95 + MS Plus
-A working config.sys and autoexec.bat files for running DOS games from within Windows and having the mouse+CD-ROM drive work (as long as a reboot isn't required)
-A working voodoo emulation, latest driver
-DirectX 7.0a and DXMedia 6
-WMP 6.4 and IE5.5 in case any game needs any of these or the codecs they provide
-Glide passthrough is set up and working perfectly, as well as Direct3D and DDraw
-Need for Speed II SE has been tested for Glide and Monster Truck Madness 2 has been tested for Direct3D, both run silky smooth and without artifacts/crashing (had to increase the cache size of the dynamic core to 64 instead of 32 for that)
-Sound, MIDI and CD audio playback

What I could NOT for the life of me get to work :
-When I go to start menu --> shut down... --> restart computer (or when a program wants you to reboot), DOSBox-X will complain that the drive letters are not "contiguous" and therefore refuses to mount the CD image. I suspect that the device reserved for the letter D: by DOSBox-X upon launch (the mount command line is in the autoexec section of the config file) remains so when Windows 95 reboots and then when DOSBox-X tries to mount it to the same letter again, it fails, tries to mount it on E: and then says the drive letters aren't in sequence. My question is this : HOW can I force DOSBox-X to actually mount the CD again when Windows 95 reboots? placing the "imgmount -u d" command above the one for mounting has absolutely no effect. It's as if the drive remains "locked" once Win95 starts until DOSBox is completely shutdown... which would defeat the purpose of having a special autoexec / config.sys configuration for a specific DOS program that requires a CD to run. All I can do right now is hope DOS mode will just launch without completely rebooting the VM 😒

-I have never been able to make a CD-ROM drive appear in Windows 95 if I don't mount anything on D first in the autoexec section of the config file. Is there a way to do it? Right now, it's as if the drive simply does not exist at all if I don't do that. Is there any way to get that to work? (though I doubt it'll solve the issue of the drive disappearing due to a conflict upon reboot)

If anyone has a suggestion, please let me know. I think these are long-standing known issues but you never know. Maybe someone found a workaround that doesn't involve completely restarting DOSBox-X for the sake of having specific configs per-game if necessary. Using the custom Autoexec and config.sys option in the cmd prompt shortcut's properties will cause the VM to do a complete warm reboot, screwing up the CD drive (exactly what I want to avoid)

Pls help 😁
Btw, I'm happy to hear anyone's suggestions on what I could do to improve this VM

Thanks alot