Win 98 vhd clone of old hard drive

[supmktg]

From time to time I need to access several legacy software applications that are installed in a very old (Windows 98) laptop. I am trying to install a Windows 98 virtual hard drive into Microsoft Virtual PC on my windows XP laptop, but I am having difficulty. I hope someone can help me.

I have created a .vhd file from the C: partition (which includes the Win 98 OS) of my old laptop using ‘Disk2vhd’. The .vhd file is just under 4 GB. I have installed Virtual PC 2007 on the XP laptop.

I have created a new virtual machine with 128 MB of RAM, the same as my old laptop.
I have selected my .vhd file.

When I start the new virtual machine, I get the following error: “A disk read error occurred”.

The new laptop is running XP Home. It has a 30GB Hard drive, with 15GB free after copying the old laptop’s .vhd to it.

Have I missed steps, or is it likely that the .vhd is bad? Is there a better method to transfer my existing Win 98 hard drive to a virtual hard drive?

Thanks in advance for any help I can get,
Sup

 

[Nelviticus]

I thought Disk2vhd would only run on Windows XP and higher? Not sure how you managed to run it on Win 98.

You could try installing VirtualBox and using that instead of VirtualPC, you might get lucky.

However the best option would be to install Win98 from scratch on a new virtual machine, reinstall your apps inside that VM, then copy your data across. More likely to work than cloning your old laptop drive - even if you could get it to boot it would probably fail when trying to load drivers for hardware that's no longer present.

Alternatively, find some way of installing your old apps on your XP machine and forget about virtual machines altogether. If they're old DOS applications then a program like DOSBox might get them working under XP.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[supmktg]

Nelviticus,

For the record, I ran Disk2VHD on XP with the Win 98 hard drive attached via usb hard drive adapter.

The 2 apps that I use on that drive are tied to the hard drive, and cannot be reinstalled. I need to figure out how to convert the drive into a functional vhd.

Is there a way to determine if the vhd file is bad, or if someting else is causing the problem? Is there something better than Disk2VHD that I can use to convert it? Does Virtual Box use the same vhd format as Virtual PC?

AS an afterthought, with the small size of the actual hard drive (4GB), is there a way of running this virtually on a usb thumb drive?

Thanks for your advice,
Sup

 

[Nelviticus]

The error message you were getting usually means that the machine is trying to boot from a disk that's not on the controller/port it's supposed to be on. For example, if you switch your IDE disk from Master to Slave you can get this error. I think that Disk2VHD has marked the virtual drive as being attached to a USB controller (since that's how it was attached when you converted it) but VirtualPC is trying to boot from an IDE controller.

You can attach more than one VHD to a virtual machine so you could create a new VM, install XP or 98 on it then attach your original VHD as a second disk. That might work and let you run the app from the second disk. At the very least you could get the new VM to run checkdisk on it.

I don't think the thumb drive approach would work as neither VirtualPC nor VirtualBox support booting from (real or virtual) USB devices as far as I'm aware.

Another approach is to download GParted, set up a new VM (no need to install an OS), attach your VHD to it then boot it from the GParted CD image. You should then be able to edit the partition information of the VHD and make it think it's an IDE disk rather than a USB one.

I've done something similar (trying to get XP installed on a Compact Flash card if I remember correctly) but I can't tell you how it's done as I just fumbled my way through the documentation and the FAQ on the GParted site. It was pretty helpful though.

Finally, there's the non-technical option: break your reliance on such an old app and find a new one that does the same thing, then migrate your data across.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[supmktg]

Nelviticus,

I'm pretty sure you were right about the IDE controller issue. I re-converted my drive using Paragon Drive Copy, which has a 'migrate to virtual' function. I was able to boot this new virtual drive with very little difficulty.

On initial boot, it found and automatically installed a bunch of new hardware. The only thing I still need to do is find a way to install a driver for my pci ethernet controller, it is asking me for the location of the device driver for my "Intel 21140 based 10/100 mpbs Ethernet Controller". Once I locate a driver, how do I make it available to my virtual machine?

Thanks for your help,
Sup

 

[Nelviticus]

If you install the Virtual Machine Additions on your 98 VM (I think it's an option on the VPC menu when the VM is running), you'll be able to drag and drop files from your real PC onto the virtual one's desktop.

However, I *think* the drivers for the emulated network card might be on the VM Additions CD image. The VM Additions is actually an ISO image in Virtual PC's program folder that it mounts as a CD within the VM. Once you've installed the additions and re-booted the VM, when it asks you for the drivers you should be able to use the 'have CD' option then browse the VM Additions CD for the right folder.

This is all from memory as I'm running Windows Virtual PC, which is a successor to Virtual PC 2007 and works a bit differently.

Nelviticus

 

[glnz]

supmktg and Nelviticus, This is a very good thread. Could you give me a bit more on using Paragon's 'migrate to virtual' function?

Which version of Microsoft Virtual PC are you using? And where are the files when you follow your steps?

So far, I have been unable to get Microsoft Virtual PC to install a Clonezilla image of a Win98SE HD. The Clonezilla ISO runs in Microsoft Virtual PC but it won't see the external drive on which is located the folder with the Clonezilla image files for the Win98SE HD.

Thanks.

 

[flyboytim]

It is not really useful to tag your query at the end of an old thread, but a new thread with a meaningful title can stimulate new discussion.

It is always possible to link back to a similar thread such as this for additional background.

http://www.fxxxingcomputers.co.uk