I am trying to emulate windows 95/98 and I think I installed some software wrong. I have a windows 98 system set up and I am trying to restore to a previous system before the software Voodoo was installed. Is it just copy over the .img file located in RetroArch-Win64\system or do I need to do something with the RetroArch-Win64\saves folder as well because there are what looks like files corresponding to systems and software in there. I don’t want them to conflict but if I remove them they will auto generate correct?
Again…
I don’t understand how that answers my question.
If you’re learning to ride a bike, you can’t ride a Ducati 600.
I’m trying to answer you and I don’t know where to start. I answered everything in the previous post.
This is not a windows forum, I also explained the system and the saves, also in the documentation it is very well defined.
You are going to have to read again carefully, because it seems to me that you have retentive failure or you do it on purpose. Maybe this is it.
7z?
The operation of Windows on DOSBOX is very delicate. If you make a mistake, it is best to delete the Windows img in the System folder and the file output from Windows on DOSBOX in the Save folder and start over.
It is very tedious. I have failed many times and installed the OS many times.
I’m sorry I’m having trouble understanding. I’m only trying different things to get my games to work. I thought I did everything you and the manual from both recommended pages said to do but the game still isn’t working. I am trying other things like reinstalling voodoo which I may have installed wrong as I was going by a video.
If that doesn’t work I will try and reinstall windows 98 as well.
You may be right, I may have to try and reinstall windows. All I know is I thought I did as everybody and everything written told me to do. I may just have to start over.
Even if the procedure is correct, some behavior on the RetroArch side may cause Windows to crash.
We recommend backing up the Windows img in the System folder after a clean install of Windows. After installing the driver and making sure it is stable, make another backup using it as a foundation. Of course, you need to keep two backups.
If Windows becomes incomplete, it can be restored simply by restoring the backed up img.
Backup is important.
Also, even if you specify the D drive when installing from CD-ROM, the installation information and registry will be saved in Windows on the C drive, so simply deleting from the D drive will be incomplete if you want to uninstall or redo the installation.
If you want to completely redo the installation, you must also delete from the Save folder.
RetroArch+DOSBOX-Pure is a completely independent system, so if you want to add any files to it, mount it as an FD or CD using an FD image generator or CD image generator tool.
Also, if you zip a file with the same name as the file in the save folder and load it from DOSBOX-Pure, the contents of the zip file will appear on the D drive.
However, 95/98 is a very old OS and does not support long paths or long file names. Therefore, it is necessary to use a short file name.
Also, when mounted as a CD, all files are read-only, so after copying to drive D, all files must be unchecked as read-only.
If you have at least this knowledge, the rest will work by trial and error.
Only perseverance will do.
Compress the game in ZIP, not 7z.
THAT WORKED! THANK YOU. Turns out it was the 7zip file it didn’t work. I will also comment in the other post saying the answer just in case anybody for any reason reads it and wonders what the solution was.
I’m sorry for being a nuisance. I overthink and over-complicate things and that sometimes makes it hard to understand what is being said, I’m the type of person who might have trouble finding trees in a forest.
I might make more posts on another topic concerning the documentation and guides as I think I understand what they are saying but I would like to make sure. Please don’t be angry with me, I’m trying.
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Windows 95 introduced long filenames to Windows. Windows 3.11 doesn’t support long filenames.
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Windows on DOSBOX-Pure is a recent attempt for me, so it may still be possible.
Such as the “32-bit protected mode” feature.
As far as I know, 95/98 on DOSBOX-Pure runs in 16-bit mode. The so-called MS-DOS compatibility mode. Therefore, if use a long file name, some inconvenience will occur somewhere. Files that should have been put in may disappear, for example.
There is no problem for normal use, but when compress a file by ZIP and mount it on D, a long file name will be shortened. If generate a CD image, mount it, and then copy it to D, it works fine.
Perhaps it is a peculiarity of the Japanese OS.
Japanese language treats one character as two bytes; NT series can handle 255 characters, but 95/98 can handle only 127 characters.
Also, if a ZIP file is compressed and mounted on D, it will be shortened to 8 characters. Even if it is shortened, it seems to be recognized as 127 characters inside the OS, so sometimes it can be used and sometimes it cannot. If a 2-byte character symbol or space (full-width space) is included, it is omitted and the file is damaged.
p.s.
Even with the “Do not use 32-bit protected mode disk drivers” checked, it still remained in 16-bit mode and did not go to 32-bit.
When I installed Windows95 on Neko Project II Kai, it was running on 32bit.
I understand you, we are the same.
Sometimes we forget that people don’t have to know things even if they are something we assume to be common. For example, you don’t have to know that zip and 7zip (7z) are different things.
What I do is assume, I think you know the difference between a zip and a 7z, if you install Windows and Mac and by the way you have played that game on the original Windows.
Yes, w95, w98, wMe, support 255. wNT, w2k and the others, 260 or more than 16 thousand in unicode.
Déjà vu. I think I spoke about this recently.
You have a triple confusion, lol.
The “compatibility mode / safe mode” has to do with the Windows registry and usually appears when you mishandle the operating system.
16-Bits DOS mode, that is driver, you have DOS driver in your system.
The characters have to do with the disk format, FAT, NTSC, etc. I have not had any problem with very long names in windows. If they don’t appear it’s because you either exceed the limit or you have characters that Windows 98 doesn’t support.
I guess in Japanese it’s half of 256, but I can’t say, I haven’t checked it yet.
Japanese (or 2-byte characters) are limited to 127 characters; MS-DOS is limited to 8 characters.
This seems to be the same limitation for full paths, so if you actually fill in 127 characters for a single file, you will not be able to create a folder and your drive will be damaged.
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I know, but it shouldn’t be damaged if you use names that exceed the amount, they just get shorter.
I did the test with latin and japanese characters.
I can load the Latin ones without any problem. I can create extremely long files and folders in Latin and Japanese. I can’t write in Linux in Japanese and load it in w98.
I think this is because of the ISO standard, I don’t think it has a simple solution. Write in Latin characters. 
ah. If you put a long path file on a CD, mount it and copy it to D, it is nothing. If I then create a new long path file on D, the D drive is corrupted. Can you confirm this?
Also, when I load a long-path file with ZIP, all the characters on the D drive are shortened to MS-DOS-like characters.
I have no problem with file creation or file manipulation that is completed within the OS, except when I copy or zip load a file mounted from a CD.
I suspect this is due to Windows running in MS-DOS compatibility mode.
I found this problem when installing 2000/XP/and later games on 98SE. 09 editions of Kizuato, etc.
Also, this behavior is similar to my real, clean install with Win95 on an IBM Aptiva 730.
In MS-DOS compatibility mode, it seemed to be running in 16-bit and the HDD did not run continuously. The performance was considerably degraded, with the access light blinking every 1-2 seconds instead of lighting up or blinking normally.
When I followed IBM’s recommended method (Recovery CD -> Win3.1+OS/2 -> Win95), Win95 became 32bit and the HDD improved its performance, such as running continuously.
… Could it be that DOSBOX-Pure emulates a machine with PC-DOS?
My hunch is that DOSBOX assumes PC-DOS. MS-DOS and PC-DOS seem to be similar, but PC-DOS is a very cumbersome spec…as is OS/2, but IBM’s assets and Microsoft’s assets are quite incompatible.
Perhaps, but with IBM’s version of Windows, it may not be a problem… I have confirmed that around Win3.1 and 95 and 98, there are custom OS’s specifically for IBM.
But as long as you don’t do things like put Win2000/XP/ or later OS-specific games into 95/98, there should be no problem. What I’m doing is something that doesn’t make sense that I wouldn’t normally do.
There is no need to check. This is precisely why I tell you that it could be the ISO. When you create a CD it changes the formats to ISO compatible, I have no idea how to configure my current system to write Japanese to a ISO compatible.
Again. This is drivers, it has nothing to do with the file system, nor with the ISO standard of the keyboard.
Windows is a monolithic system and compatible with 16 and 32 bits. It does not depend on MS-DOS.
That was understandable.
So why does the Win2000 installation fail? Is it a driver problem?
When I mount the Win2000 CD image on DOSBOX-Pure, the OS installation item does not appear in the DOSBOX start menu. So I set aside 2G of space and installed 98SE and tried to upgrade from Win2000 CD on 98SE. But on the first reboot I got a blue screen, which stated that there was an error on the HDD.
I guess it is for the same reason as XP, the instruction set required by the processor has not yet been emulated. NT/2k is a very different technology from w9x.