Guide: installing Windows 95 on DOSBox

This guide is for those who want to get Windows 95 working on DOSBox but don't want to go through the trouble of looking up all the scattered pieces of
information that need to be known. It took me a bit of fiddling around, but it turns out it's actually quite easy.

This guide may not work if youre using the last version of Windows 95 (OSR2.5) since thats essentially an early Windows 98 with IE4 integration.

If you have suggestions for improving this guide, feel free to send them to michiel@thingmajig.org.

Note: Windows 95 on DOSBox is just a toy. Its not recommended for any serious work. Those who need Windows 95 for some productive purpose, or even
for running games, are most likely better off using something like Virtualbox or Qemu.

1. Get a boot disk

img file. I myself used 622C.IMG from BootDisk.com.
First off, get an MS-DOS boot disk. You'll need a .

I don't know exactly which versions of MS-DOS will work, but I suppose 7 should be fine too. I've read that you can cheat Windows into accepting a different
version by using set ver 6.0, but I can't confirm this myself since if you use 6.22 you'll never run into this problem.

Make sure this file is in your DOSBox directory.

2. Make a hard disk image

You can do this using the bximage program that comes with Bochs. HAL9000's Megabuild contains a built in command for creating these from within
DOSBox.

Making an image using bximage is extremely straightforward. There's a section on using it on the DOSBox wiki too.

All you really need to remember when using bximage is the cylinder count, since everything else is standardized and shouldn't be changed. In my example I'm
making a 400 MB image which has 812 cylinders (and 16 heads, and 63 sectors per track). Only flat images are supported (as of 0.74)sparse images will
not be recognized. However, it's possible to still compress flat files using your host OS's filesystem; in Windows installations using an NTFS filesystem, this is
the default behavior (hence the blue filename). Its recommended to keep your image relatively small, as a DOSBox bug causes large drives (larger than
512MB?) to not be completely accessible.

Copy this file (let's call it c.img) to your DOSBox directory.

3. Mount and format your new hard disk image

So now we have a hard disk image onto which we're going to be installing Windows 95. The problem is it doesn't have a filesystem yet; its unformatted. This
is where our boot disk first comes in.

Start up DOSBox and type the following:

imgmount 2 c.img -size 512,63,16,812 -t hdd -fs none

Note: you may need to replace c.img with the name you gave your image file, and replace 812 with the cylinder count you used when creating the file using
bximage. It should say: Drive number 2 mounted as c.img.

You might notice that we havent given it a drive letter: basically, every drive needs to have a filesystem before it can be used properly, and before it does it
cant have a drive letter. Without a filesystem (like FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, etc.) a filesystem is just unused space that the operating system cant work with.
Modifying filesystems on a drive is called partitioning.

Now type the following:

boot 622c.img

If necessary, replace 622c.img with whatever MS-DOS boot disk youre using. DOSBox will now boot up from the disk.

The first thing we'll do is use fdisk to create a filesystem. Run fdisk, choose option 1 (Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive), then option 1 (Create
Primary DOS Partition). When asked if you want the new partition to comprise the whole hard disk, choose Y. A system restart will be prompted. Press enter;
DOSBox will quit.

Now that we have our newly partitioned drive, we need to format it to effectively bring it to a completely empty and consistent state so that we can start putting
files on it. To do so, we need to restart DOSBox and boot back into MS-DOS. This time, however, we'll mount our drive differently:

imgmount c c.img

At this point, DOSBox should say: Drive C is mounted as c.img. If something is wrong, start over from the start of step 3 (or possibly step 2; it might be that
your disk image was not generated properly). Don't attempt to access the C drive from DOSBox's own DOS shell or you might make it unreadable for pure
DOS. Now boot into MS-DOS by using the same command as last time:

boot 622c.img

When you enter the MS-DOS prompt from the boot disk, format your new C drive by typing:

format c:

Note: if at this point DOSBox is incorrectly reporting the size of your hard disk, that may be due to either a DOSBox bug or a problem with MS-DOS. I don't
know exactly which one, but I've found that hard disk images with a size of over 512 MB (or a cylinder count of over 1000?) tend to be problematic. They'll
work, but you'll only be able to use a portion.

4. Copy over setup files and start Windows 95 installation

At this point you should have your Windows 95 disc ready. The version should not matter all that much; I'm using a Dutch OEM version myself, the same one I
got with my first Pentium computer in 1995.

It doesn't really matter if it's an image or not. The trick here is to copy the installation files over to your newly formatted hard disk and then perform the install
from there. (If you don't have an image already, consider making one anyway. Discs degrade over time and will become unreadable at some point.)

The easiest way to do this (to my knowledge, anyway) is to mount the c.img file in your operating system and then simply drag and drop the files. I'm on Mac
OS X myself and can mount it by double clicking on the image file in the Finder. On Windows, you might try using using DiskExplorer (recommended by
Dominus). Anything that can mount and modify FAT image files will do (let me know if you know of a good application for this). Make sure you close
DOSBox before you move the files.

All you need to do is move over the entire WIN95 directory (the one containing all the CAB files) from the CD to your mounted and now formatted image. It
should be only about 34 MB in size if youre using an earlier Windows 95 edition. Unmount c.img and restart DOSBox. We'll now start the installation.

Mount c.img like we did the last time and boot 622c.img.

To start the installation, type the following:

c:
cd win95
setup /is

(The /is flag will prevent Scandisk from running.)

Note: if the mouse is not working at this point, exit setup and run mouse.com from the A: drive.

Windows 95 will now begin installation. To have Windows startup automatically when starting DOSBox, you could edit your config to contain the following
under the autoexec section:

[autoexec]
imgmount c c.img
boot c.img

In a little while, Windows 95 will be installed. If you find that DOSBox isn't running anymore after a while, that's because Windows setup prompted a restart.
Simply restart DOSBox and reboot into your c.img (if you haven't already added the above lines to your [autoexec]).
5. Caveats and finishing up
Note that the best way to run Windows 95 under DOSBox 0.74 is with machine=svga_s3, core=normal and cputype=pentium_slow. That might change in
later releases. I'm actually not completely sure about core=normal being the best choice (qbix mentioned that the dynamic core is probably as safe to use as
the normal core), but it's the oldest and most tested.

In the past, core=simple was used to run Windows 95, but in recent DOSBox versions it will cause glitches because it emulates fewer instructions.

It's possible to get internet working using HAL9000's NE2000 passthrough patch, but it requires compiling your own version or using his Megabuild.

On Mac OS X, make sure you don't set the screen bit depth to anything over 8-bit (256 colors). 16-bit and 32-bit are broken and cause visual glitches. I've also
found that using the OpenGL output system is MUCH faster in full-screen mode.

Hardware detection should work just fine, so don't worry about DOSBox locking up.

Need help getting this to work?

DOSBox does not support running Windows 95 (or indeed anything that isnt a game). Please dont ask the DOSBox devs for help. Instead, mail me
at michiel@thingmajig.org. Ill edit the guide to improve it if the answer to your question or problem is useful for other people.
Version history
0.2 2013-02-18 finished porting over the old version with minor modifications
added caveat at the beginning
0.1 2012-09-10 initial version

s a topic on the VOGONS forum. It was moved to Google Docs on 2012-08-10.

This guide was originally written on 2010-05-30 and posted a

Todo list
improve the section on copying over the installation files: which applications can be used to mount FAT image files on Windows and Linux?
add a section on DOSBOXs inherent limitations, such as lack of CD drive support while in pure DOS mode

Special thanks
qbix, Dominus, h-a-l-9000 and the rest of the #dosbox IRC gang for helping me get this working.