Virtual PC being a Virtual pain in the a..
 

I have WIN XP sp2 operating system.

I desire Win 98 os in Virtual PC environment.

I have a legit Win 98 cd in the drive. I follow all steps on installing virtual pc and setting up the ram and memory space for a windows 98 virtual os. I get to the step where you click the "START" button to go install windows 98 cd and the computer dies and goes to blue screen and restarts. Any ideas? I have looked at half a dozen walkthroughs including abandonia's and not having any luck.

I do not have the expertise with Virtual PCs to be able to be of help for your particular problem... However, could I ask you why exactly you wish to have a virtual drive with Win98 when you are using Windows XP?

Windows XP is great to emulate Windows 98 and have good compatibility with that system. Usually one only need to go in the compatibility tab for the desired program and switch compatibility with Windows 98 to run said program.

What "start" button? Which computer crashes, the host (real) or guest (virtual)? Which tutorial are you following (link), and at what point did you have problems?

To put it in short I'm sick and tired of making concessions because I'm trying to stick the square peg in the round hole. I'm sick of games that don't have music or glitch because they were never meant to be run in this OS. You're right a lot of games will run well in XP. Many will run almost OK and I'm tired of it.

The two specifically I'm into right now are Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries and Mechwarrior 3. With tweaking and a couple hours sunk into combing the net for troubleshoots and patches I was able to get both to install and run, only to have later missions in the game become unbeatable due to crashes. I'm sick of it.

WinXP does great with some games.

I have Magic The Gathering Shandalar running like a top on it. Diablo II is running like a top on it dunno if it was originally an XP release or what. Then you have a lot of no-music games. I believe Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat was one. Dungeons and Dragons Ravenloft Strahd's Possession was one. Dark Sun Shattered Lands was one also I believe. I find this unacceptable as the music often makes a game what it is. What would Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden or Final Fantasy have been without gaming music?

People try to band aid situations with Dosbox. Dosbox is a wonderful program. Its useability varies wildly. Some games its best to have a top of the line computer to bring the game up to normal speed. Some games music does not play. Lets be honest MS Dos was a B to play games in anyway with memory and other crashes the norm so I don't hate on DosBox but I want the real Operating Systems.

I am doing research on Dual Boot. I would be open to whatever gets me multiple operating systems.

I have WIN XP.

I want Win 98

Then I will look to trying to get MS Dos although I have some confusion as to if its bundled into Win 98.

Tired of dumping hours and hours into making these games work on operating systems they were never meant to run on. For every eureka game where everything works perfect there are 3 games that have no music, crash later in the game, don't have the video cut scenes, etc. Sorry to vent but I need to vent lol.

The real host computer crashes on Step 10 when I click "START" button
http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Microsoft-Virtual-PC

I have also tried to follow the abandonia instructions with same result.

I am open to setting up a dual boot for this computer. This hard drive has 1.5 tera and I have a backup drive I can copy from if it becomes unuseable for some reason.

Can you say what message you got on blue screen? It's almost surely something with drivers, but always good to be sure...

No message PC just dies. I guess technically thats not blue screen although my flatscreen tv I have hooked up to the computer does go blue but thats the tv.

I am looking into Dual boot.

If that happens, you have a problem in your computer. It's difficult to know what.

As far as DOS goes, if you want the "real" OS you'll have to get an old computer. And as you say you'll have pesky problems with memory etc. Which by the way apply exactly the same in Windows 9x; the only difference is that games made in the late 90's didn't have such pesky memory requirements as earlier ones. Windows 9x does include DOS (7.x).

DOS in Virtual PC is very poorly emulated, most games won't work right. DOSBox emulates DOS immensely better; I recommend you to give it another spin.

I gave up on virtual

I have a 1.5 tera HD. I split 500 gig of it off to a new hard drive "Z:" and formatted it.

I am not sure what to do now. I have the windows 98 cd. I want to install windows 98 onto the Z: drive and be able to boot into it with a couple clicks.

I am doing research to figure out how to do this but any help would be appreciated.

I am using a tutorial on this site
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...dows-7-xp.html

I am confused about drivers specifically.

If I boot from win 98 cd and tell it install on the new partition which is on the same hard drive as my original C: drive, how will I get drivers onto the Z: drive the new one that I'm sticking win 98 on?