Virtual PC using WinXP for Win98SE - help

[Bill Blanton]

Well it fully recognizes it *outside* of running VM - that much I know.
But apparently not inside VM (except for showing its drive letter (Q within a menu bar option, where I can (seemingly) choose to
deselect or reselect it, but other than that, nothing happens).


"Just as any other Windows program"?? But it doesn't seem to be working that way. So I am guessing that when VM was written,
it may have been written with the ability to use only a select (and somewhat dated) set of API calls that it can use (or would
even know about). Either that, or perhaps my windows CD/DVD drivers are a bit inadequate in so far as VM is able to access the
drive. (but this is a 2008 Dell)

So I am guessing that these older versions of VPC (even through 2007) may need some certain API hooks(?) to recognize this SATA
CD-DVD drive, that my native WinXP host applications running directly in XP apparently don't need. Unless I still don't
understand, which is possible.

What I am trying to say is this. Isn't it possible that without running VM, I have full access to the SATA CD/DVD drive, but
while inside VM, some API or whatever interface is missing or inadequate to properly access the drive? That sure seems to be the
case. And just seeing the drive letter recognized within a menu bar option in VM doesn't count!

It should count! .. Here's something from VPC 04 help

<quote>
Virtual machine components:
<snip>
Emulated hardware and external devices, including keyboard, mouse, CD, DVD,
floppy disk, sound card, ports, printers, and other devices that the virtual
machine uses to emulate a physical computer.
</quote>


What I'm trying to say is that VPC (not to be confused with the VM) is a layer
between the guest and host, and it should be able to access the optical drive,
as long as Window's is able to.

You have the OS in the VM doing a read on a generic IDE virtual CD/DVD. VPC
intercvepts the call, and does the read, (through the host), on you SATA CD/DVD.
It then transfer the requested data back to the virtual CD. The virtual machine/OS
does not need to know how to interact with your physical CD/DVD. It's sort of
the same principle with HD access... though that is emulated through an
additional file layer.

I tried dragging the ISO image into the cd icon on the VM tray and it never does anything (except change color and apparently
recognize its presence, but that's it).

And then reboot the VM?

I tried it with the old Win95CD, and (as I recall) even with the XP cd, and it was still no go. (I mean the cd drive spins when a
cd is inserted, but that's all).

After inserting the CD and doing a CD(menu) > "Use physical drive X:",
(or right click the CD icon at the bottom), you may need to reboot.

If you're not fast, and the virtual machine already booted, you would have
to reboot the VM (Action > Reset) w/the CD already captured, so that the
machine can recognize it as the boot device. Just like a real machine would
work in such a situation.

 

[Bill in Co.]

It should count! .. Here's something from VPC 04 help

<quote>
Virtual machine components:
<snip>
Emulated hardware and external devices, including keyboard, mouse, CD,
DVD,
floppy disk, sound card, ports, printers, and other devices that the
virtual
machine uses to emulate a physical computer.
</quote>


What I'm trying to say is that VPC (not to be confused with the VM) is a
layer
between the guest and host, and it should be able to access the optical
drive, as long as Window's is able to.

You have the OS in the VM doing a read on a generic IDE virtual CD/DVD.
VPC
intercvepts the call, and does the read, (through the host), on you SATA
CD/DVD. It then transfer the requested data back to the virtual CD. The
virtual
machine/OS does not need to know how to interact with your physical
CD/DVD. It's sort of
the same principle with HD access... though that is emulated through an
additional file layer.

I went back and played with it some more. It turns out I was wrong in at
least one of my assumptions (that I even had a bootable windows CD!), since
when I slipped in the Acronis True Image bootable CD just to try that out,
it came up fine - within VPC. More below..

And then reboot the VM?

Well, I didn't have to make an ISO afterall, as I apparently did not have a
bootable CD in the first place to make a bootable ISO from! More below.

After inserting the CD and doing a CD(menu) > "Use physical drive X:",
(or right click the CD icon at the bottom), you may need to reboot.

If you're not fast, and the virtual machine already booted, you would have
to reboot the VM (Action > Reset) w/the CD already captured, so that the
machine can recognize it as the boot device. Just like a real machine
would
work in such a situation.

==== summary:

The only problem remaining is (in addition to not having a bootable Windows
CD for trying those out, if I wanted), is this (for running DOS in VPC):

I can't even use VPC to run a DOS VM, because *within VPC*, and booting up
under DOS on my dos floppy disk in there, the CD drive is NOT even
recognized, even using the good ole, GCDROM.SYS driver, which otherwise
works fine for DOS (outside of running VPC)!

In other words - and I don't understand this - if I boot up on my "flash DOS
drive" (with gcdrom in its config.sys), I have access to the CD, and its
fully recognized.

BUT when booting up in DOS on the floppy *within VPC*, I don't have access.
The CD driver isn't recognized within VPC!

The message displayed there is: "Driver name is MSCD000. No CD-ROM drive
to use. GCDROM not loaded! And then, "No valid CD ROM device drivers
selected". AND YET it works perfectly fine on my bootable DOS flash drive
(using the same config.sys, etc, files) outside of VPC.

 

[Bill Blanton]

Bill Blanton wrote:

==== summary:

The only problem remaining is (in addition to not having a bootable Windows CD for trying those out, if I wanted), is this (for
running DOS in VPC):

I can't even use VPC to run a DOS VM, because *within VPC*, and booting up under DOS on my dos floppy disk in there, the CD drive
is NOT even recognized, even using the good ole, GCDROM.SYS driver, which otherwise works fine for DOS (outside of running VPC)!

In other words - and I don't understand this - if I boot up on my "flash DOS drive" (with gcdrom in its config.sys), I have access
to the CD, and its fully recognized.

BUT when booting up in DOS on the floppy *within VPC*, I don't have access. The CD driver isn't recognized within VPC!

The message displayed there is: "Driver name is MSCD000. No CD-ROM drive to use. GCDROM not loaded! And then, "No valid CD
ROM device drivers selected". AND YET it works perfectly fine on my bootable DOS flash drive (using the same config.sys, etc,
files) outside of VPC.

Bill, You need to boot with a "generic" boot floppy, and *not* the one that uses
GCDROM.sys. Use the image that I provided in my previous post
http://home.earthlink.net/~bblanton2/98DOSBoot.vfd
or get a genenic boot floppy from bootdisk.com. That should work to get you
access to your CDROM. The virtual machine does not recognize the virtual
CD as one needing that (gcdrom) driver.

 

[Bill Blanton]

Bill, You need to boot with a "generic" boot floppy, and *not* the one that uses
GCDROM.sys. Use the image that I provided in my previous post
http://home.earthlink.net/~bblanton2/98DOSBoot.vfd
or get a genenic boot floppy from bootdisk.com. That should work to get you
access to your CDROM. The virtual machine does not recognize the virtual
CD as one needing that (gcdrom) driver.

Don't forget to "capture" the CD before booting, so that DOS can reconize
the device. (like I said before, if you miss the timing on that just "reset" the
VM.

 

[Bill in Co.]

Bill, You need to boot with a "generic" boot floppy, and *not* the one
that
uses GCDROM.sys. Use the image that I provided in my previous post
http://home.earthlink.net/~bblanton2/98DOSBoot.vfd
or get a genenic boot floppy from bootdisk.com. That should work to get
you access to your CDROM. The virtual machine does not recognize the
virtual CD as one needing that (gcdrom) driver.

OK, thanks Bill. All systems are "go" now, now that I've used the bootdisk
image. And after "a bit of work", I finally figured out how to get the
fshare and mouse in there, too, and make a new ".vfd" floppy image file, to
use for its bootup. It's so much nicer and faster using that image file
rather than using a real floppy.

It seems VPC's virtual disk wants to use a virtual "C:" as its default
drive, but I suppose that is changeable. But I guess that's ok, as long as
I keep it straight (that the virtual C: drive has NOTHING to do with my real
C: drive! But maybe it's gnerally better leaving it that way, as C: is the
normal default drive, for any op system

I'm just using VPC2004 for DOS (Win98's version of DOS) right now. And
that may be all I want or need for now. At least I got it running ok.

One thing I did notice is that when VPC is running, it does tend to slow
things down a bit in accessing stuff outside of VPC. But I don't think
it's a RAM problem, though, since VPC2004 is apparently only using about 30
MB of RAM, last time I checked, so I think it's just a shared CPU resource
issue. (I'm only using a 1.6 GHz WinXP system, with 1 GB of RAM).

Thanks for the help! I was ready to throw in the towel, but I must say
this has been an interesting experience. The Virtual PC thing is really
pretty fascinating to explore and use.

 

[Bill Blanton]

OK, thanks Bill. All systems are "go" now, now that I've used the bootdisk image. And after "a bit of work", I finally figured
out how to get the fshare and mouse in there, too, and make a new ".vfd" floppy image file, to use for its bootup. It's so much
nicer and faster using that image file rather than using a real floppy.

It is. I hardly ever boot from a physical floppy any more. Over the years
I've converted most of my boot floppys and CDs (various disk tools) to
virtual image format. It's also convienent to keep a blank formatted vfd
on file, for times when you need to create a new floppy.

It seems VPC's virtual disk wants to use a virtual "C:" as its default drive, but I suppose that is changeable. But I guess
that's ok, as long as I keep it straight (that the virtual C: drive has NOTHING to do with my real C: drive! But maybe it's
gnerally better leaving it that way, as C: is the normal default drive, for any op system

Right. Drives in the VM have nothing to do with drives on the physical machine.
The whole of a virtual HDD is kept within one file on the host. That's one
of the biggest benefits of virtualization. You can do what you like to the
guest without worrying about the host being affected.

I'm just using VPC2004 for DOS (Win98's version of DOS) right now. And that may be all I want or need for now. At least I got
it running ok.

One thing I did notice is that when VPC is running, it does tend to slow things down a bit in accessing stuff outside of VPC.
But I don't think it's a RAM problem, though, since VPC2004 is apparently only using about 30 MB of RAM, last time I checked, so I
think it's just a shared CPU resource issue. (I'm only using a 1.6 GHz WinXP system, with 1 GB of RAM).

That is somewhat on the low side. You probably know this already, but
you can adjust how much RAM is allocated to each VM, in the "settings"
of each machine.

Thanks for the help! I was ready to throw in the towel, but I must say this has been an interesting experience. The Virtual PC
thing is really pretty fascinating to explore and use.

You're welcome, Bill. Welcome to the virtual side ;-)

 

[Bill in Co.]

You're welcome, Bill. Welcome to the virtual side ;-)

Hey Bill, I had another question or two, if you don't mind:

I notice that when using VPC2004 (for DOS), and even with a LFN dos driver
loaded, I still can't see long file names within VPC. I've tried loading
both LFNDOS and DOSLFN, and neither do squat *within VPC*, but work just
fine outside of VPC (on my external USB DOS flash drive stick).

Ideally, I'd like to be able to see some long file names within VPC, or at
least have that option (with a LFN driver loaded as needbe), just like I can
do when booting up on my external USB DOS flash disk.

Plus I'd like to be able to copy some (dos related) directories and files
from my other HD partitions into VPC (and preserve the long file names), and
I can't do this outside of VPC, obviously, since its virtual HD is invisible
outside of VPC (being stored in its own virtual HD .vhd file). So I have to
do the copy operations within VPC. (I tried using LCOPY (part of the
LFNTOOLS package) and it didn't seem to be able to deal with my large FAT32
partitions (40GB). I think it was written too long ago to be able to handle
it.

Do you have any ideas?
Thanks in advance!

 

[Bill in Co.]

Slight update below (sorry).

Hey Bill, I had another question or two, if you don't mind:

I notice that when using VPC2004 (for DOS), and even with a LFN dos driver
loaded, I still can't see long file names within VPC. I've tried loading
both LFNDOS and DOSLFN, and neither do squat *within VPC*, but work just
fine outside of VPC (on my external USB DOS flash drive stick).

Ideally, I'd like to be able to see some long file names within VPC, or at
least have that option (with a LFN driver loaded as needbe), just like I
can
do when booting up on my external USB DOS flash disk.

UPDATE on the part below, on copying folders/files into VPC:

I think I found another way to copy folders/files into VPC, by just dragging
them in there (i.e., into the VPC folders icon), although the folders then
get reassigned new drive letters, starting at Z: and working backwards -
weird.

BUT as to whether or not dragging them in is preserving their long file
names, nobody knows, since, for some wierd reason, I can't EVER get to see
ANY long file names in VPC, no matter which LFN driver I've used! (the most
common ones are DOSLFN and LFNDOS, by the way, which work great on a DOS
Boot Disk, but NOT in VPC).

 

[Bill in Co.]

Updated:

Hey Bill, I had another question or two, if you don't mind:

I notice that when using VPC2004 (for DOS), and even with a LFN dos driver
loaded, I still can't see long file names within VPC. I've tried loading
both LFNDOS and DOSLFN, and neither do squat *within VPC*, but work just
fine outside of VPC (on my external USB DOS flash drive stick).

Ideally, I'd like to be able to see some long file names within VPC, or at
least have that option (with a LFN driver loaded as needbe), just like I
can
do when booting up on my external USB DOS flash disk.

UPDATE:
OK, here is what I've recently found out: On a FAT16 volume, you get to
see the LFNs with either of those LFN drivers inside VPC(2004SP1), but not
so for FAT32 volumes. Again, this limitation evidently only applies to use
within VPC, as those LFN drivers work just fine outside of VPC, on both
FAT16 and FAT32 volumes (like on an external USB Flash DOS 7.1 bootable
thumb disk, for example).

I think at this point I might just see if this has anomoly been fixed in
VPC2007 - if not, I'll probably stick with VPC2004.

Thanks for getting me started on this, Bill. Much appreciated.