How to install windows on dosbox

Windows versions 1.0-3.11

For these versions you often have the choice to run them directly in DOSBox-X itself, using the emulated integrated DOS, or if you install a real DOS first and run Windows on top of that.

There are various limitations that Windows imposes that are dependent on the version. A few milestones:

Microsoft Windows 95+

These versions must be installed in a virtual HDD image.

Windows 3.x was available for both Retail and via OEM, with exception of Windows 3.0a with Multimedia Extensions which was available only through OEMs.

OEM versions may include and default to different drivers in SETUP for things like video and sound.

There are already some guides to installing Windows 3.x in DOSBox, and those guides will also work with DOSBox-X.
Some examples:

This guide does not look to replicate those guides. Instead, this guide will have some install guidance and hints and tips not covered on those pages, or that are specific to DOSBox-X. It is not intended to be a comprehensive guide.

There are several ways to extract the contents of disk images, such as 7zip on Windows or «Disk Image Mounter» on Linux.
In this example, DOSBox-X itself is used to mount a disk image, copy its contents into a folder, unmount the disk image and do the next.

MOUNT C /home/myuser/winroot
C:
MD INSTALL
IMGMOUNT A DISK01.IMG -U
COPY A:\*.* C:\INSTALL
IMGMOUNT A DISK02.IMG -U
COPY A:\*.* C:\INSTALL
IMGMOUNT A DISK03.IMG -U
COPY A:\*.* C:\INSTALL
IMGMOUNT A DISK04.IMG -U
COPY A:\*.* C:\INSTALL
IMGMOUNT A DISK05.IMG -U
COPY A:\*.* C:\INSTALL
IMGMOUNT A -U

Your new INSTALL directory now holds the contents of all 5 disks in this example.

If you have a «Windows 3.0a Multimedia Edition» CD-ROM image, you can simply mount it in DOSBox-X, and run the SETUP program.

e.g.

IMGMOUNT D win30me.iso
D:
CD MWIN
SETUP.EXE

The installer is normally found on the CD as \MWIN\SETUP.EXE.

Starting with DOSBox-X 0.83.12 there are two different back-ends to the NE2000 adapter emulation.
The default back-end is backend=pcap.

[ne2000]
ne2000=true
nicirq=10
backend=pcap

[ethernet, pcap]
realnic=list

[ne2000]
ne2000=true
nicirq=10
backend=slirp

This only applies to Windows for Workgroups (WfW).

If you install WfW inside DOSBox-X with networking support, you need to run DEVICE C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS and C:\WINDOWS\NET START before starting Windows if run from DOSBox-X’s internal DOS.

Windows for Workgroups by default only supports SMB networking over NBF (NetBIOS Frames aka NetBEUI) or IPX.
There is no support by default for the TCP/IP protocol.

There were 3rd party WinSock solutions, but those were meant for dial-up internet access and are not specific to WfW.

You can however install Microsoft TCP/IP-32, which was sold separately, to add TCP/IP support to WfW.

By default, the SB16 Windows 3.1x drivers will emulate MIDI playback using the OPL chip.
However, DOSBox-X has built-in support for General MIDI emulation (which is enabled by default), and which sounds much better.

To set it up, first ensure the SB16 drivers are installed.
Then in Windows 3.1x go to «Control Panel» and open «MIDI Mapper».

In Windows 3.1x go to «Control Panel», and open «MIDI Mapper.
If there is no «MIDI Mapper» icon in «Control Panel», the Sound Blaster drivers were not installed.
Select the «SB16 All MIDI» option from the drop-down menu and press the «Close» button.

You should now be able to open the Windows 3.1x Media Player and playback C:\WINDOWS\CANYON.MID.

The same can be carried out with Windows 3.0a with Multimedia Extensions, but the «SB16 All MIDI» option will not be listed.

Instead in the «MIDI Mapper» dialogue box click on the «New…​» button.
You will be asked for a name and description.
You can name it anything you like, for instance «SB16 Ext MIDI», and click the «OK» button.
You do not have to enter anything for the Description.

You will then get a «MIDI Setup» window.
The only thing you want to change here is the «Port Name» to «SB MIDI Out» for all 16 lines.
You may also notice that for each line the active checkbox gets checked, this is correct.
Once finished click the «OK» button and confirm the save.

You should now be able to open the Windows 3.0a Media Player and playback C:\MWINDOWS\MMDATA\CANYON.MID.

For the best print quality, you will want to print to a PostScript printer in Windows 3.x.

First, setup your DOSBox-X config to print to a file as such:

[dosbox]
captures=capture

[parallel]
parallel1=file timeout=2000

Next in Windows 3.x, select any PostScript printer such as the «QMS ColorScript 100», during printer setup connected to LPT1.

When you print, a .prt file in your captures= directory will be created, which despite the extension, is actually a PostScript file.

On Linux and macOS, PostScript files are natively supported and can be viewed and printed.
On a Windows host, it is necessary to install a separate PostScript viewer such as GSview.

As an alternative, you can use the integrated Epson printer emulation, but the output quality will be significantly less compared to PostScript.

First, setup your DOSBox-X config to emulate an Epson printer as such:

[parallel]
parallel1=printer

[printer]
printer=true
printoutput=ps
multipage=true
timeout=2000

Next in Windows 3.x, select any Epson dot-matrix printer during printer setup, such as:

When you print, a PostScript file with the .ps extension will be created in your current working directory.
The emulated Epson printer settings can be adjusted as documented on the above linked wiki printing guide.

Table of Contents

• Installing Microsoft Windows 95 in DOSBox-X
• Overview
• Windows CD-ROM editions this guide applies to
• External links
• DOSBox-X config file
• General installation Notes
• Dynamic vs Normal core
• Turbo mode
• Creating a Harddisk image
• Installation Method
  • Requirements
  • Starting the installation
  • Copying the contents of the CD-ROM
  • Running SETUP.EXE
  • Booting Windows 95 after installation
• Steps to take after installation
• Mounting CD or Diskette images
• Enabling networking
  • Enabling NE2000 in your DOSBox-X config file
  • Setting up NE2000 networking in Windows 95
• Emulated video adapter and video mode
  • VESA driver
• Emulated sound card
• Enabling General MIDI
• Enabling printing
  • Print to PostScript
  • Epson emulation
• 3dfx Voodoo
  • Glide pass-through
• Hard Disk Read-ahead optimization
• Host Folder mounts
• Known limitations
• Outstanding issues

This guide will give a general description of installing Windows 95 in DOSBox-X, in addition to addressing some common issues.

If you don’t know which Windows 9x version to install, we recommend that you install Windows 98SE.
If you want to stick with Windows 95, we recommend to use Windows 95 OSR2 or later.

You first need to create a DOSBox-X config file.

[sdl]
autolock=true

[dosbox]
title=Windows 95
memsize=64


vmemsize=8
vesa modelist width limit=0
vesa modelist height limit=0

[dos]
# Set 'ver=7.1' if using Win95 OSR2 (95B) or later
ver=7.0
hard drive data rate limit=0
floppy drive data rate limit=0

[cpu]
cputype=pentium_mmx
core=normal

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16vibra

[fdc, primary]
int13fakev86io=true

[ide, primary]
int13fakeio=true
int13fakev86io=true

[ide, secondary]
int13fakeio=true
int13fakev86io=true
cd-rom insertion delay=4000

[render]
scaler=none

[autoexec]

Copy the above config and save it as win95.conf

• If you get a prompt stating that C:\WINDOWS already exists, ignore it, and continue the installation.

• During the installation you may be asked if you have a CD-ROM, Network card or sound card that you want it to scan for. If you have NE2000 enabled in your DOSBox-X config file, you may want to check the Network adapter check box. Your DOSBox-X CD-ROM and Sound Card will be detected regardless if you check its box or not.

• In case you installed Windows 95 OSR2.5 you may have noticed that you did not get IE4 and the Active Desktop features. This is because this is an optional installation. On the CD, simply run \WIN95\IE4SETUP.EXE to install it. While there is no real advantage to either feature, installing it does bring some new and updated libraries such as MSVCRT.DLL and COMCTL32.DLL that some programs need.

The dynamic_x86 core, which should perform much better, has been sufficiently enhanced that it can now be used for most use-cases with Windows 95.

However, for now we still recommend that you do the installation of Windows 95 using core=normal until issue #2215 is resolved.

But after the installation is finished you should be able to change to core=dynamic_x86.

Should you run into problems such as application crashes or a Windows 95 blue-screen that cannot be reproduced with core=normal, please report the problem on the DOSBox-X Git issues page.

One known issue is that opening a DOS window in Windows 95 will cause a crash when not using core=normal.

Some parts of the installation, but also starting Windows 95 can take a considerable amount of time.

You may be able to speed this up considerably (depending on the host CPU) by using the DOSBox-X Turbo mode, which can be enabled from the drop-down menu bar by selecting «CPU» followed by «Turbo (Fast Forward)».
This turbo mode is not like the old Turbo button on retro PCs, but functions more like a fast-forward, and therefore should not be used when interacting with the guest OS.

By default, the moment you press a key on the keyboard, turbo mode will disengage.

You may also want to enable turbo mode by default to allow Windows 95 to startup quicker by merging the following settings into your DOSBox-X config file.

Alternatively, you can use the -fat option to instruct IMGMAKE to create a certain FAT type (assuming that is possible for the harddisk size).

First you need to start DOSBox-X from the command-line, using your newly created win95.conf.
This assumes that dosbox-x is in your path and win95.conf is in your current directory.

dosbox-x -conf win95.conf

Then in DOSBox-X you need to create a new harddisk image file with IMGMAKE.

This example uses an 2GB hard disk image with a single FAT16 formatted partition.
This is the maximum size for FAT16 and supported by all Windows 95 releases.

IMGMAKE hdd.img -t hd_2gig -fat 16

Or if you’re using Windows 95 OSR2 or later, you can create a FAT32 volume.
Technically the FAT32 filesystem is capable of supporting partitions up to 2TB, but the generic IDE driver in Windows 95 cannot handle volumes greater than 32GB.
Larger partition sizes may be possible with 3rd party drivers but are not covered here.

In later Windows versions, starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft won’t let you format a volume bigger than 32GB with FAT32 using its built-in formatting tool, this was presumably to push migrations to NTFS and later exFAT.

IMGMAKE hdd.img -t hd_8gig

Or if you want to create a larger disk, you can create a custom type.
This is an example of a 16GB (16*1024=16384 MB) disk, which due to its size, will be formatted as FAT32.

IMGMAKE hdd.img -t hd -size 16384

Other installation methods are possible than the one described below.
This method is however considered to be the quickest one with the least number of steps.

Copying the contents of the CD-ROM

While not strictly necessary, as it is possible to run SETUP.EXE directly from the CD-ROM (if you have the CD-ROM automatically mounted in your [autoexec] section of the config file).
It is recommended to copy the installation files (contents of the WIN95 directory on the CD-ROM) to your HDD image, as it will prevent Windows 95 from asking for the CD-ROM when it needs additional files later.

XCOPY D:\WIN95 C:\WIN95 /I /E

The files in the above example are copied to the C:\WIN95 directory.

Note

You may want to use «C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS» instead, as that is the directory that OEM installs normally use. But if you do, be aware that the installer will complain that C:\WINDOWS already exists. When you get the warning below, select «Other directory» and click «Next >» to continue. On the screen afterwards, change the directory to «C:\WINDOWS» and continue the installation.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

IMGMOUNT 0 empty -fs none -t floppy
IMGMOUNT 1 empty -fs none -t floppy -size 512,15,2,80
IMGMOUNT C hdd.img -ide 1m
IMGMOUNT D empty -t iso -ide 2m
BOOT C:

dosbox-x -conf win95.conf

dosbox-x -conf win95.conf

Once Windows 95 is installed, here is some additional software you may want to install or update:

DOSBox-X supports mounting CD and diskette (floppy) images, and making those available to an OS booted in DOSBox-X.

To do so, an empty diskette or CD drive needs to be attached before booting a guest OS such as Windows 95, or diskette or CD images need to be attached (which will automatically cause an appropriate drive type to be emulated).

For example, to specifying multiple image files with the IMGMOUNT command:

IMGMOUNT A disk1.img disk2.img disk3.img
IMGMOUNT D cd1.iso cd2.iso cd3.iso

You can then swap between disk images with the «DOS» → «Swap floppy drive» or «Swap CD drive» option from the drop-down menus, or using the hot-key.

To enable networking, you first need to enable NE2000 adapter emulation in your win95.conf config file and select an appropriate back-end for the NE2000 emulation.

[ne2000]
ne2000=true
nicirq=10
backend=pcap

[ethernet, pcap]
realnic=list

[ne2000]
ne2000=true
nicirq=10
backend=slirp

Setting up NE2000 networking in Windows 95

Detection during installation

Windows 95 setup wizard will ask if you want to detect additional hardware during installation.
The exact options presented may vary depending on the Windows 95 edition.
You can tick the «Network adapter» checkbox, and it should continue and find the emulated NE2000 adapter.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

It will however, not give you the possibility to set the resources at this point, and you will need to do so in device manager afterwards.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

Once the Windows 95 installation is finished, right-click on «My Computer» on the desktop and select «Properties».
Now in the «System Properties» dialogue, select the «Device Manager» tab.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

Highlight the «NE2000 Compatible» entry and click on the «Properties» tab and then click the «Set Configuration Manually» button.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

Now you need to highlight the «Interrupt Request» entry and click the «Change Setting…​» button. You can now change the IRQ to 10 to match the nicirq= value in your DOSBox-X config file.

Next, highlight the «Input/Output Range» entry, and again click the «Change Setting…​» button. Now change the value to «0300 — 031F».

Once you’re finished adjusting the resources, click the «OK» button, and Windows 95 will prompt you to shut down to apply the settings, after which you need to restart Windows 95 in DOSBox-X.

Note	By default, Windows 95 only enables Novell’s IPX/SPX protocol. Most Windows 95 applications expect TCP/IP which you will need to manually enable in the Network settings.

NE2000 Detection after installation

If you enabled NE2000 support in your DOSBox-X config file after Windows 95 installation, go to «Start», «Settings» and «Control Panel» and double-click on «Add New Hardware».

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

In the «Add New Hardware Wizard» dialogue, click the «Next >» button to continue.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

Now select «Yes (Recommended)» and click the «Next >» button to continue.
It will ask for another confirmation.
Again, simply click the «Next >» button.

If it detected new hardware, you should get this dialogue.
You can click the «Details…​» button to see what it found, after which you can click on «Finish».

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

It will now want you to provide some details, click on «OK».

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

You must at a minimum enter a value in the «Workgroup» field.
If you don’t know what to type, just type «WORKGROUP».

You may also want to provide a more descriptive «Computer Name».

Don’t close the dialogue just yet though, click on the «Configuration» tab instead.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

Highlight the «NE2000 Compatible» entry and click the «Properties» button.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

On the «NE2000 Compatible Properties» dialogue, select the «Resources» tab, and adjust the IRQ to 10 to match the nicirq= value in your DOSBox-X config file.
Then click «OK» to finish.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

Lastly, while you’re in the Network settings dialogue, you may also want to add the TCP/IP protocol, which is not enabled by default on Windows 95.

On the Configuration tab, click on «Add», then select «Protocol» and click again «Add…​»

You will now be presented with the «Select Network Protocol» dialogue.
Select manufacturer: «Microsoft», and for Network Protocols: «TCP/IP», and click the «OK» button.

Note	In the Network settings, you can optionally remove the «IPX/SPX-compatible Protocol» that was automatically installed, as few Windows programs need it.

Note	By default, TCP/IP will try to get its network configuration over DHCP, which should work in most cases. If you need to manually specify the settings, highlight «TCP/IP», and click the «Properties» button.

Once you’re finished, Click OK to close the Network settings window, and the TCP/IP driver will be installed, and Windows will prompt you to restart your computer.
Confirm, and Windows 95 will reboot.
After the reboot you should have working TCP/IP networking.

The default video adapter that DOSBox-X emulates is the S3 Trio64, which is the best emulated video adapter that DOSBox-X offers, with the widest range of resolutions and colour depths.

There is a newer S3 video driver for Win95, version 2.11.03, dated June 12, 1996.

This update adds some additional video modes. But it does not add support for 8MB video RAM, or wide-screen video modes.

The available video modes with the updated S3 Trio64 driver are:

A few enhancements have been made to the emulated S3 Trio64, compared to a real S3 Trio64:

However, these enhancements cannot be used in Windows 95 with the S3 video driver due to driver limitations.
As such you will be limited to the above video modes with this driver.

allow high definition vesa modes=true
allow unusual vesa modes=true
allow low resolution vesa modes=false

The emulated sound card used in this guide is the SB16 Vibra, instead of the default SB16.
This is simply because the SB16 Vibra is an ISA PnP card, and therefore automatically detected by Windows.
There is no other real advantage of using the emulated SB16 Vibra over the SB16.

An optional driver update to 4.38.14 is available on the VOGONS Vintage Driver Library (ignore that the download claims it is for Windows 98, the update is for both Windows 95 and 98).

If you have a working DOSBox-X General MIDI setup, either emulated or real, you can use that in Windows 95.

Go to «Start», «Settings» and open «Control Panel», and then double-click on «Multimedia».

Now on the «MIDI» tab, change the «Single instrument» option to «MPU-401 Compatible», and click OK to close the window.

Картинка с сайта: maron2000.github.io

The emulated 3dfx Voodoo PCI device is enabled by default in DOSBox-X, but Windows 95 lacks drivers for it by default.
As such a «PCI Multimedia Video Device» will show in Device Manager with a yellow exclamation mark.

A driver package is available here (v3.01.00) to enable support.

If for some reason you do not want 3dfx Voodoo emulation, it can be disabled by adding the following lines to your DOSBox-X config:

[voodoo]
voodoo_card=false

In «System Properties», select the «Performance» tab, and click the «File System…​» button.
A separate «File System Properties» window will open.
On the «Hard Disk» tab you can specify the Read-ahead optimization.

Based on benchmark results (WinBench 96), it seems that setting this to «None» gives the best performance in combination with DOSBox-X, although the difference is marginal.
This is no doubt because the host system is better at caching then the Windows 98 cache function.

Starting with DOSBox-X 2022.08.0, there is optional support to dynamically convert a host folder mount to an emulated FAT harddisk for use when you need to boot a guest OS, such as Windows 95.
This can be accomplished in one of two ways. Either when you issue the boot command, you add the option -convertfat. e.g. boot c: -convertfat.

Or by setting the following option in your DOSBox-X config file:

[sdl]
convertdrivefat = true

When you now boot from a real image file, it will attempt to convert ALL folder mounts at the time of booting to emulated FAT Harddisks.

One thing to note, is that there is no way to specify the FAT type to use for the conversion.
The FAT type will be automatically selected based on the aggregate size of files in the folder, plus 250MiB (this can be adjusted with the convert fat free space option in the DOSBox-X config file).
If the total space of files + 250MiB does not exceed 2GiB, it will convert it into a FAT16 disk. Otherwise, it will become a FAT32, which in turn will require a guest OS with FAT32 support.

Alternatively, you can also make the emulated FAT drive read-only by using the -convertfatro option with the boot command. Or by setting convert fat free space=0 option in the DOSBox-X config file.

• If you intend at any point to use a Floppy or CD during your usage of Windows 95, you must attach either a floppy and/or CD image before starting Windows 95, or an empty floppy or CD-ROM drive.
  If a floppy or CD drive is not present when starting Windows 95 the drive is simply missing, and you cannot add it without rebooting the guest OS.

• When mounting a CD-ROM image using imgmount, before booting Windows 95, you may have to specify the IDE device to attach it to for it to work properly in Windows 95. e.g. imgmount d game_cd.iso -ide 2m to make the CD-ROM drive appear as the master device on the secondary IDE controller.

• Resolve «Drive A is using MS-DOS compatibility mode file system»