Post the exact error message.

and for Windows 9x you want to use Virtual PC NOT Virtualbox.

Attached is a screenshot of the error message. How do I get Virtual PC? I'm using Windows 7 Home edition, so I can't get the one microsoft's offering, at least not from their page.

Yep, you'll need to install Virtual PC 2007 and then install Windows 98 in that.

The error you posted means that you are trying to run a 16bit executable in 64bit Windows which is not supported.

You CAN run the new version of Virtual PC on Windows 7 Home Edition but you CAN NOT run "XP MODE". (Although there probably is a way to "hack" it).

It's generally recommended to use VPC 2007 over the new version of Virtual PC if you plan to use Windows 9x.

Thanks! It works perfectly!

Hey, my friend wants to play this game too, but she's on a MacBook Pro. What's a good program for that?

Parallels or Vmware Fusion but I'm not a Mac guy.

Not sure how well 9x works in Parallels\Vmware Fusion.

On the PC Windows 9x works fine in Vmware Player\Workstation.

Well we found this program called Q... it's a QEMU interface that seems like it might work. I'll tell you later if it does.

I'm in the same situation: runnings Windows 7 and trying to play my old Zoombinis game. I have Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 running with Windows 98 installed. Put in my Zoombinis disk... and got this error message when I tried to open the set-up. Any ideas of what I need to do?

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Oh, also, I get this error with any executable that I try to open.

Did you install Windows 98 in VPC yourself, or did you download a pre-installed virtual machine from somewhere?

Also, since this is a Windows 3.x game, it may actually be easier to run it under Windows 3.x in DOSBox.

I installed it on VPC myself, but from an iso that I downloaded since I don't have a CD for Windows 98.

I'm going to try DOSbox now. Thanks for the tip!

DOSbox wasn't really working out for me, so I installed MS DOS and then Windows 3.1 in my Virtual PC. When I try to run the setup for Zoombinis in Windows 3.1 I just get a black screen with flickering white lines... time to try Windows 95?

😖

You can try Windows 95 if you want, but obviously Windows 98 is not supposed to give you a "not a valid WIN32 application" with any executable that you try to open, so something went wrong with your installation somewhere.

Either that, or your Zoombinis CD has become unreadable.

You're right! It was my disk. I downloaded a new ISO of the disk, mounted it to my Windows 98 virtual machine, and it worked!

Hello i have zoombinis on my windows vista desktop and have a windows 7 laptop and cant get it to install. when i try to install it it says "Unable to run E:\setup.exe". any advice?

Are you running the 64-bit versions of Windows Vista or Windows 7? If so, you will have to use either Virtual PC, or DOSBox+Win 3.1, or XP Mode if you have Windows 7 Ultimate.

Thanks dude and yes it is windows 7 64 bit. My vista desktop is 32 bit and that might be why i got it to install. When i installed zoombinis on vista it gave me the same error as my 7 is, but on another forum site told me to download a different Broderbund (the publisher) game and then install zoombinis. I tried to do that on my 7 but is gave the same error to that game. I really as a last resort want to use a virtual pc so if there is any other way to install it without errors than that would be awesome.

Unless there's some extra-fancy patch out there that no one knows about, there is no way you will get this game to run on Windows 7 x64 without Virtual PC, DOSBox, or something else along those lines. Period.

Ok dude thanks for the help. Just as a random question, would it possible run on a win 7 32 bit?

It would be more possible than running it on x64, but there could very well be other issues.