Boot Image for Win98SE?

[bgrumbin]

I have an important to me physical Win98SE computer for which I need to create an ISO to feed to VMWare Workstation. When VMWare refused to do its "virtualize a physical machine" process, I went looking for a way to create an ISO to feed to it. The ISO created for me by ImgBurn with all the hidden and system files included is reported to me by VMWare as being not bootable.

 

Went looking for a "boot image" on the physical machine and also on the original Win98SE installation CDROM, so that I could make use of ImgBurn's "make bootable" function. No such thing any of those places. Where and how can I get the "boot image" required by ImgBurn to create a bootable ISO for me to feed to VMWare Workstation to create a virtual machine containing everything on my rapidly physically deteriorating old slow Win98SE machine so that it can run on my brand new Win7 computer in a VMWare virtual machine? There is, incidentally, no floppy drive on the Win7 machine.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

You can't use ImgBurn to take (or build) an image of your Win 98 machine's hard drive so it can be used as a bootable ISO, things don't work like that.

 

I know you can give vmware access to physical hardware but that might not be ideal (unless you don't mind moving the old 98 hdd into your new pc).

 

Is there no way you could just install the Win 98 OS from scratch in a new VM and configure it the same as your old physical machine?

 

If that's too much hassle, take a complete image of the old 98 hdd (using a proper hdd tool) and then see about converting that into VMWare format.

[bgrumbin]

After an estimated 23 attempts at using ImgBurn to create a bootable ISO for VMWare along with trying that ISO on two other virtual machine products, that "You can't" was my preliminary conclusion. But I wanted to check with ImgBurn people first before accepting that conclusion. As for giving VMWare access to physical hardware via USB port, VMWare itself has blocked that approach with its SSL insistences which refuse to access the Win98SE hard drive. The Win98SE hdd is useless in the Win7 box (ROTFL) since none of the hardware in the box is compatible with Win98SE nor its hard drive.

 

In fact I *did* install Win98SE from scratch into a VMWare virtual machine, but it's not that simple: I have at least one key proggie, for which I had only temporary use of the CDROM, which requires massive messy integration into the Windows slopperating system. No workarounds have appeared in months of seeking for getting that key proggie reinstalled into the VMWare Win98SE virtual machine. Unlike other things under Win98SE, it can't simply be copied from its source directory over to the VM directory, not even with all of its "known" references elsewhere on the hard drive. It's the unknown references and their control by the convicted predatory Microsoft monopoly's slopperating system that prevent it from running in the vm.

 

Do I gather correctly that you're saying that ImgBurn is NOT "a proper hdd tool", as I thought it was? (that for sure is what I thought I was going to have when I installed ImgBurn) And if I did find something that was "a proper hdd tool", by what means could I discover what was required for "converting that into VMWare format"?

[LIGHTNING UK!]

ImgBurn is an optical disc burning program.

 

A proper hdd program would be something like Acronis True Image, Macrium Reflect, Norton Ghost etc. They're hdd backup / cloning tools.

 

I'm sure there must be a way to get vmware to use an image (sector by sector copy) of a hdd. It's not something I've ever had to do, but I'm sure someone will have done and a method for doing so will be available via a Google search.

[bgrumbin]

Thanks for suggesting things that "might be" HDD cloning tools while reinforcing both my experience and your earlier comment that ImgBurn isn't going to work. I looked at each of the three, as follows:

 

Acronis True Image is NOT a backup nor hdd image file creation product at all. It is what is euphemized as "cloud storage", i.e. "won't you be stupid enough to GIVE AWAY your entire computer system with personal confidential information on it to every criminal in the world who might want to attack you with that information and be willing to pay us $49.99 to create that attack mechanism?". PSHAW!

 

Macrium Reflect appears to work only on the host system as distinct from an attached hdd, a search on Win98SE came up blank in their Support forums, suggesting that it is not capable of creating an NTFS Win7 file containing everything on a FAT32 Win98SE hdd. But I have inquired of that company "whether" it can access Win98SE via USB 2.0 and shall wait patiently for them to respond.

 

I was surprised to see Norton Ghost on your list because I have been working with it for years on behalf of my obnoxious Xtra Problems computer system. I had v12.0 which Win7 identified as v14.0 and said it had "known compatibility issues". Installed it anyway on a tentative basis and brought something up to my Win7 Desktop. But after years of use, I recall nothing that suggests it is capable of anything but total overwrite of *physical* hard drives. No conceivable capability of producing a "file" containing the contents of a FAT32 Win98SE hdd written to the NTFS Win7 hdd without blowing away the entire Win7 computer.

[bgrumbin]

I was incorrect about what my ancient Ghost v12.0 could do. In fact it was willing, running from my XP machine where it has no "compatibility issues", to produce an uncompressed image file of my physical Win98SE hard drive. That image was virtually identical in size to the .iso that ImgBurn produces as was the companion file which ImgBurn labels ".msd" as I recall. However, fed to VMWare, that hard disk image resulted in *precisely* the same error messages that ImgBurn's .iso (in its dozens of different creations) has been producing: "no boot filename received" and "Operating System not found". I'm unclear what difference there might be between ImgBurn's SYSNAM.iso and the Ghost image (renamed to SYSNAME.iso). But as far as how they're treated by VMWare, there is no difference. Neither of them contains what VMWare demands. Which is what I was asking for in the first place when I posted here: BOOT IMAGE FOR WIN98SE? What has resulted thus far is mere corroboration of my actual experience after dozens of attempts trying to use ImgBurn's outputs: it appears to be "impossible" to virtualize that physical Win98SE computer.

 

Still hoping for some practical approach to solving the problem of getting that computer virtualized (which is what ImgBurn was touted as when I searched the web for "make ISO from Win98SE").

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Acronis TrueImage is what I said it was. I use it and have done so for years. If they've added a 'Cloud' feature in the latest release, that doesn't change the fundamental purpose of the tool.

 

It'll clone drives, take backup images of them (sector by sector and whatever the other method is that it uses) just fine.

 

All you're after is an image of the entire hard drive.

 

To me, it looks like you could take an image of the Win98 machine hdd and store it on an external drive, then attach that external drive to your Windows 7 PC and use VMware vCenter Converter (http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/ ) to make your virtual machine.

[bgrumbin]

I do appreciative your authoritative comments on what ImgBurn can/can't do. As the author, there could be no higher authority. As for VMWare vCenter Converter, it has some essential "missing files" which prevent it from accessing external drives at all. In fact, I have had the physical Win98SE machine directly attached as an external drive to the Win7. The external hard drive connection hardware has worked beautifully to facilitate copying more than 100 Gb of various files from prior hdd storage media over to the Win7. There would have been no need for making an image of an entire drive (distinct from groups of files) and trying to feed that to VMWare internally, if and only if the vCenter Converter were willing to work. My search for ImgBurn and other possibilities *followed* my finding that VMWare's external drive access pretenses (virtualizing a physical machine) in reality didn't work. What I have gotten installed in the klunky VMWare Workstation 8 has all been from functional ISOs, so I mistakenly thought that all I had to do was to get a decent ISO and it would install. VMWare has determined otherwise.