Windows 95 Preliminary Release Problems in 86Box

[SupernovaNick]

I am trying to install a Preliminary Release build of Windows 95 (Chicago) such as 58s, 73f, or 73g in 86Box. The installation and first boot for all three builds work just fine (fdisk and format C: with a Windows 95 boot disk, run setup from CD, accept all default settings, create autoexec.bat and config.sys on C: drive, reboot with boot disk still in, change both "Buffers" and "Files" from 30 to 90, and reboot to Windows), but at the second boot, it either hangs at the boot screen or gives me this error (screenshot from 73g):



And then by the third boot, I get this error (screenshot from 73g):



After this happens, all of the contents of the C:\CHICAGO are completely glitched and broken (screenshot from 73g):



Is there something I am doing wrong? Does anyone else get these errors? Does anyone know a fix?

My specs are:
Award 430VX PCI, Pentium 120, 128MB RAM, S3 Trio64 (VLB), PS/2 Mouse, Sound Blaster 16

Thanks.

[Overdoze]

I would reduce the ram to 16 MB or so. That was a lot when these builds were made, 128 MB might be an overkill.

[Battler]

How are you rebooting? Soft reset or hard reset?

[Zv45Beta]

I'd bet this is a hard drive issue... Are you using a drive bigger than 2GB? I think the Win95 OSR2 bootdisk formats to FAT32... try a DOS5/6 bootdisk with CD-ROM drivers and try dropping the HDD size down to around 540MB (that's the LBA limit for old motherboards).

[SupernovaNick]

How are you rebooting? Soft reset or hard reset?

Hard reset.

Are you using a drive bigger than 2GB? I think the Win95 OSR2 bootdisk formats to FAT32...

The disk is exactly 2GB (2048MB) and I am using a Win95 OSR1 bootdisk.

I would reduce the ram to 16 MB or so. That was a lot when these builds were made, 128 MB might be an overkill.

This does not work.

Strangely I don't think I have ever had this happen to me on Virtual PC.

[BF10]

I actually noticed this when installing 73g on PCem once. I recommend using a 386 BIOS with an AMD processor and 9MB RAM. I also prefer a Trident graphics card if you want 256 color and 1024x768 resolution and SB1 if you want sound. After setup, if it hangs at the boot screen, then hard reset, hold F8 during the boot and then run through Y on everything until you reach win.com; select N on it. Then browse to the CHICAGO directory and try using "win.com /3 /b".

[Battler]

I think the hard disk is too big, and you should install from MS-DOS rather than from Windows 95 OSR 2. My install of Chicago 58s, for example, was done from MS-DOS 6.00 onto a hard disk smaller than 503 MB, and this issue didn't happen.

[Overdoze]

I think the hard disk is too big, and you should install from MS-DOS rather than from Windows 95 OSR 2. My install of Chicago 58s, for example, was done from MS-DOS 6.00 onto a hard disk smaller than 503 MB, and this issue didn't happen.

He said he's using an OSR1 disk, so FAT16 is the only option in that case anyway.

[SupernovaNick]

I managed to get build 73g working with my original specs.

After booting to the OS for the first time and then shutting it down, I extracted the C:\CHICAGO directory from the disk image using 7-Zip, rebooted until the files were corrupted, and then ran SCANDISK from the Windows 95 boot disk. SCANDISK seemed to fix the corruption, after which I moved my extracted C:\CHICAGO directory back onto the image. Now it boots just fine.

I cannot figure out how to do this with build 58s because when I open the disk image in 7-Zip, it only shows two files with the extension .fat corresponding to the file system (NTFS disks do this too), and after another reboot, I can see all the files again but only after the C:\CHICAGO directory is corrupted. However, I think I will stick with build 73g since the Sound Blaster 16 and S3 drivers work for me on this build.

[Overdoze]

I managed to get build 73g working with my original specs.

After booting to the OS for the first time and then shutting it down, I extracted the C:\CHICAGO directory from the disk image using 7-Zip, rebooted until the files were corrupted, and then ran SCANDISK from the Windows 95 boot disk. SCANDISK seemed to fix the corruption, after which I moved my extracted C:\CHICAGO directory back onto the image. Now it boots just fine.

I cannot figure out how to do this with build 58s because when I open the disk image in 7-Zip, it only shows two files with the extension .fat corresponding to the file system (NTFS disks do this too), and after another reboot, I can see all the files again but only after the C:\CHICAGO directory is corrupted. However, I think I will stick with build 73g since the Sound Blaster 16 and S3 drivers work for me on this build.

This is a very interesting issue, so if you could upload your 86Box config file and the disk image you're using, maybe we could figure this out.

[Lucas Brooks]

For all 58s installs I had, you can only see FAT files using 7-zip. WinImage can open the disk fine so use WinImage. I haven't had any trouble installing those releases in 86Box.