Windows 3.1 Install Disks Download

Having a problem trying to put this on an old Dell Latitude. Doesn't matter if I'm trying to install Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS, if I try to boot from one of the floppies I get this message: Remove disks and other media. Windows is started as an application program, and can be terminated at any time, returning the user to the MS-DOS prompt. MS-DOS also provides device drivers for certain tasks such as CD-ROM or network access, specifically remote disk drive or remote printer access; these drivers run in real mode.

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Install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox to run old 16-bit Windows games on 64-bit versions of Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and anywhere else DOSBox runs. This is particularly useful as only 32-bit versions of Windows can run those 16-bit applications.

Windows 3.1 was actually just an application that ran on DOS, and DOSBox is an emulator designed to run DOS and DOS applications. Windows 3.1 in DOSBox is an ideal combination for running old Windows 3.1-era applications.

Install Windows 3.1

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First, you’ll need to create a folder on your computer. This folder will contain the contents of the “C:” drive you’ll provide to DOSBox. Don’t use your actual C: drive on Windows for this. Make a folder like “C:dos”, for example.

Create a folder inside the “C:dos” folder — for example, “C:dosINSTALL” — and copy all the files from your Windows 3.1 floppy disks to that folder. Windows 3.1 is still under Microsoft copyright, and can’t legally be downloaded from the web, although many websites do offer it for download and Microsoft no longer offers it for sale.

You can use Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups 3.11 — whichever you have available.

Next, install and launch DOSBox. At the DOS prompt, type the following command and press Enter to mount the folder you created as your C: drive in DOSBox:

mount c c:dos

(If you named the folder somewhere else or placed it at another location, type that location instead of c:dos.)

Switch to the C: drive by typing the following two characters and pressing Enter:

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Next, enter the folder containing your Windows 3.1 installation files:

cd install

(If you named the folder something else, type that instead of install.)

Finally, launch the Windows 3.1 setup wizard:

setup.exe

Go through the Windows 3.1 setup wizard to install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox. When it’s done, close the DOS system by clicking “Reboot” in the wizard.

When you restart DOSBox, you can launch Windows 3.1 by running the following commands in order:

mount c c:dos

cd windows

win

Install Video Drivers

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DOSBox supports standard VGA graphics. However, it also supports some other types of graphics. By default, it’s set up to emulate S3 Graphics. For best graphics support, you’ll want to install the S3 graphics drivers and configure Windows 3.1 to use a higher resolution and more colors.

You can download the S3 video driver from the Classic Games website. Unzip the .zip file to a folder inside your DOSBox C: drive folder. For example, it would make sense to put these files in the “C:doss3” folder.

In Windows 3.1, double-click the Main program folder and double-click the “Windows Setup” icon. Click the “Options” menu in the Windows Setup window and select “Change System Settings.”

Click the “Display” box, scroll down to the bottom, and select “Other display (Requires disk from OEM).”

Type the path to the S3 drivers. For example, if you unzipped them to the C:doss3 folder, you’d type “C:S3” here.

Choose your preferred resolution and colors. We recommend choosing 800×600 with 256 colors. This is the highest resolution and number of colors many games will support.

Click OK several times. Windows will install the drivers and you’ll be prompted to restart it. After you do, you’ll see your new graphical settings in effect.

If Windows won’t work properly after you select a display mode, run the following command after using the “cd windows” command to enter the Windows directory:

setup.exe

You’ll then be able to select a different video mode.

Install Sound Drivers

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There’s one more driver issue to take care of. Windows 3.1 doesn’t include sound drivers that will work completely with the SoundBlaster sound hardware DOSBox is emulating. You’ll want to install those, too.

As with the S3 video driver, you can download the Sound Blaster 16 Creative Audio Driver from the Classic Games website. Unzip the downloaded archive into a folder like c:dossb

Exit Windows 3.1 by clicking “File” and selecting “Exit Windows” if it’s open in DOSBox. Run the following commands to launch the Sound Blaster 16 driver installer, assuming you unzipped the folder to c:dossb

cd c:sb

Flat Rock Software acquired the rights and released the source code in 2014. This repository contains the source code for The Catacomb (also known as Catacomb II). It is released under the GNU GPLv2. The source code is designed for Borland C 2.0, but compiled fine with Borland C 3.1 at the time of this release. The Catacomb engine was used to create a 30 level sequel, originally called Catacomb II and later renamed The Catacomb. 3d java game code.

install.exe

Press Enter to install the drivers, select Full Installation, and press Enter again. By default, you’ll see the line: “Microsoft Windows 3.1 path : None”.

Select “Microsoft Windows 3.1 path” with the arrow keys and press Enter.

Enter the default path, which is C:WINDOWS, and press Enter. Press Enter again to continue.

On the next screen, select the “Interrupt setting: 5” value and press Enter. It’s set to 5 by default, but DOSBox’s default is 7.

Select “7” for the Interrupt Setting and press Enter. You can then press Enter to continue. Allow the installation process to finish and “reboot” your DOS system by closing DOSBox and reopening it.

Launch Windows 3.1 again and you’ll have full sound support, including support for MIDI audio. You should hear a sound as soon as you launch Windows 3.1 again.

Install and Run Games and Other Applications

To actually use an application, download it (or copy it from old disks) and place it in a folder inside your c:dos folder. For example, you might want to place it in c:dosgamename.

You can then create a shortcut to the game’s .exe file by clicking File > New and browsing to its .exe file. Double-click that shortcut to launch the game.

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The game should just work, launching within the DOSBox window as if it were running on Windows 3.1 — after all, it is.

You don’t have to go through this entire setup process again in the future, either. Just take that c:dos folder — or whatever else you named it — and back it up. Move it to another computer and you can use it after installing DOSBox. Because we haven’t configured DOSBox at all and have just used its default settings, you won’t even have to tweak your DOSBox settings before it will work.

What You’ll Need

You’ll need two things for this: A Windows 95 ISO file and a Windows 95 boot disk image. Unlike modern operating systems, the Windows 95 installation disc isn’t bootable. You must first boot into an MS-DOS environment from a Windows 95 boot disk, which would have been a floppy disk at the time, to get the installation started.

If you have an old Windows 95 CD lying around, you can insert it into your PC and create an ISO file from it. While ISO files of Windows 95 are available online, bear in mind that Windows 95 is still under Microsoft copyright, and can’t be legally downloaded from the web. So start digging through those old drawers of yours.

Once you’ve got your Windows 95 ISO file, you can download a boot diskette image from AllBootDisks. You will probably just need to download the “Windows95a.img” file. Windows 95b (also known as Windows 95 OSR2) was only available to OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), so any Windows 95 disc you have lying around will either by the original Windows 95 release (also known as Windows 95 RTM) or the Windows 95a release (also known as Windows 95 OSR1), which came with Service Pack 1 installed.

Step One: Create Your Virtual Machine

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We’ll be doing this in VirtualBox, which is completely free to use and available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can do it in other virtual machine programs like VMware, but the process of configuring the virtual machine software will be a little different.

Once you have VirtualBox installed, click the “New” button to create a new virtual machine.

Enter whatever name you like and select “Windows 95” from the Version box. If you name it “Windows 95”, VirtualBox will automatically choose the correct Windows version.

Choose how much RAM you want to expose to your virtual machine. VirtualBox recommends 64 MB, while official Microsoft blog The Old New Thing claims that Windows 95 won’t boot if it has more than around 480 MB of memory. You could split the difference and safely use 256 MB, which would be more than enough for old Windows 95 applications.

Continue through the wizard until you’re prompted to create your virtual hard disk. VirtualBox will automatically suggest 2.0 GB, and you probably don’t want to go over that. The retail versions of Windows 95 only support the FAT16 file system, which means they can’t use drives over 2 GB in size.

Windows 95b (aka OSR2), which was only released to device manufactures and never sold at retail, does support FAT32. So, if you were using this version of Windows 95, you could theoretically use up to 32 GB of space.

Don’t boot up the machine right after you’re finished creating it. First, you’ll need to change a few settings. Right-click your Windows 95 virtual machine and select “Settings”.

Click the “System” category, click the “Acceleration” tab, and uncheck “Enable VT-x/AMD-V” hardware virtualization.

If you leave this option enabled, you’ll be able to install Windows 95, but it will just show a black screen when it boots up afterwards.

Next, click the “Storage” category and select the virtual drive under the Floppy controller. Click the floppy disk button to the right of Floppy Drive and click “Choose Virtual Floppy Disk File” in the menu. Browse to the boot disk .img file and select it.

Finally, click the Empty disc drive under the IDE controller, click the disc icon to the right of Optical Drive, and click “Choose Virtual Optical DIsk File”. Browse to your Windows 95 ISO file and select it.

Click “OK” to save your settings when you’re done.

Step Two: Prepare Your Virtual C: Drive

You can now just double-click the Windows 95 virtual machine in your library to boot it up. It will boot to a DOS prompt.

Note that the virtual machine will capture your keyboard and mouse once you click inside it, but you can press the host key—that’s the right Ctrl key on your keyboard, by default—to free your input and use your PC’s desktop normally. The key is displayed at the bottom right corner of the virtual machine window.

First, you’ll need to partition the virtual drive you created. Type the following command at the prompt and press Enter:

This process is very simple. You’ll be starting with an empty drive, so you just want to create a DOS partition. That’s the default option, which is “1”. You just need to accept the default options to go through the fdisk process.

You can just press “Enter” three times after launching fdisk to create a DOS partition, create a primary partition, and agree that you want to use the maximum size of the drive and make the partition active.

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You’ll be told you have to restart your virtual machine before continuing. To do this, click Input > Keyboard > Insert Ctrl-Alt-Del in VirtualBox. Press the right Ctrl key to free your mouse first, if necessary.

You’ll now need to format your new partition, which will be available in the virtual machine as the C: drive. To format it, type the following command at the A:> prompt and press Enter:

Type Y and press Enter to agree to the format process when prompted. You’ll then be prompted to Enter a label for the drive. You can enter whatever you like, or nothing at all. Press “Enter” afterwards to finish the process.

Step Three: Launch the Windows 95 Installer

You will now need to copy the files from the Windows 95 ISO file to your C: drive. Theoretically, you should just be able to run the Setup program from the disc drive itself to install Windows 95. However, this produces errors, as the disc drive isn’t mounted after the installer reboots, and the installer isn’t able to find driver files it needs. Instead, we found it much easier to simply copy the files to the C: drive and run the installer from there.

First, figure out which drive letter your disc drive was mounted as. This is displayed when your virtual machine boots up. On our virtual machine, it’s the R: drive. If you forgot and can’t see it on your screen, you can always restart your virtual machine once again with the Ctrl+Alt+Delete option in the keyboard menu to view this info.

Run the following command to copy the files from the Windows 95 disc to your C: drive, replacing R: with whatever drive letter corresponds to your virtual disc drive.

When the process is complete, you can now switch to your C: drive and launch the setup program from the INSTALL program, like so:

Press Enter once again to continue when prompted.

The graphical Windows 95 setup program will appear. From here on out, you can do everything graphically without messing with the DOS prompt.

The actual installation process is simple. On most screens, you can accept the default options and speed through the process. You will be prompted to enter your Windows 95 product key before the installation process finishes, however. Different editions of Windows 95 require different product keys, so ensure you’re using the correct key.

When you reach the Analyzing Your Computer screen, be sure to check the “Network Adapter” and “Sound, MIDI, or Video Capture Card” options to ensure all the virtual machine’s hardware is correctly detected and configured.

When you’re asked to create a Startup Disk, you can select “No, I do not want a startup disk” to continue. This isn’t 1995 and you’re not installing this on a real PC, after all.

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The actual installation process will be extremely quick on modern hardware, even in a virtual machine.

At the end of the setup process, Windows will prompt you to reboot and tell you to remove the floppy disk from your computer. To do this, click Devices > Floppy Drive > Remove Disk From Virtual Drive. Click “OK” to reboot your PC and continue afterwards.

The setup process will continue setting up your hardware. You’ll be told you have to provide a workgroup name to continue, but you can enter anything you like here.

Finally, you’ll be prompted to provide your time zone and set up a printer. You can just click “Cancel” in the Add Printer Wizard window to skip configuring a printer when it appears.

Finally, your PC will reboot and you’ll be prompted to create a password. You’ll then be presented with the Windows 95 desktop. You’re done—you now have a Windows 95 virtual machine.

To really get back into the 90’s, open Windows Explorer from Windows 95’s Start menu and head to the C:InstallFunstuffVideos folder. You’ll find music videos for Weezer’s Buddy Holly (“Weezer”) and Edie Brickell’s Good Times (“Goodtime”), which were included on the Windows 95 disc. There’s also a movie trailer for the movie Rob Roy, which was also released in 1995.

The videos in the “Highperf” folder are higher quality than the ones in the main Videos folder, so be sure to watch those—your modern PC can handle them!

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