Can Wine emulate Windows 95?

Question

I have VirtualPool2 for Windows 95, but recently the CD drive has not been working on my Windows 95 machine. VPool only supports Windows 95, so I can't run it in Wine, it detects Wine as a Windows NT environment.

Is there some way to configure Wine to emulate Windows 95, or is there another emulator I can use?

score 9 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 30 '21 at 16:40

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If you're running a 64-bit system, you'll need to create a 32-bit Wine prefix to mimic older versions of Windows (older than Windows XP).

Specify the architecture, and a new path to use for the prefix:

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/path/to/wineprefix winecfg

Configure Wine for the application as needed. There will be more Windows versions listed. Then run:

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/path/to/wineprefix wine virus.exe

Or whatever it is that you need to run.

edited Dec 30 '21 at 16:40

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jan 15 '15 at 01:48

Nick

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...and I've come full circle. Searched for the same problem and found my own solution, only noticing when I tried to upvote... – Nick Mar 08 '19 at 16:20
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The link is half broken. Is it [this one](https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#How_do_I_create_a_32_bit_wineprefix_on_a_64_bit_system.3F)? – Peter Mortensen Dec 30 '21 at 16:41

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 07 '12 at 22:29

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You can use winecfg to modify the default version of Windows emulated or to modify settings for specific executables.

answered Mar 07 '12 at 22:29

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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it installs, but when I run it it displays "VirtualPool CD not in drive" – Nate Koppenhaver Mar 07 '12 at 22:46
Sounds like you need to ask a separate question for that. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Mar 07 '12 at 22:55
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And you'll need an older version of wine. Current versions (I checked wine 1.7) report the _oldest_ Windows version they will report to applications as Windows XP. – Michael Hampton Nov 28 '14 at 05:40

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 30 '21 at 16:38

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DOSBox has some support for Windows 95... And it is open source.

edited Dec 30 '21 at 16:38

Peter Mortensen

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answered Mar 07 '12 at 22:27

Canadian Luke

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I found only one citation in some document "Note: Windows 95 on DOSBox is just a toy. It’s not recommended for any serious work. Those who need Windows 95 for some productive purpose, or even for running games, are most likely better off using something like Virtualbox or Qemu." https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hvgFvAYjPG93h-Avun3sprvZX2GfkRhl4YJBT15FTx0/ Later on that link: "DOSBox does not support running Windows 95 (or indeed anything that isn’t a game)." Nothing in the official documents. Could you please provide a link for your statement? – Yaroslav Nikitenko Nov 10 '20 at 14:02
Only that I have ran it myself. I do not have the documentation on this computer (that was almost 8 years ago that I wrote the answer, and likely a couple years earlier that I did it) – Canadian Luke Nov 10 '20 at 17:14
I think that DOSBox might have changed during that time. When I tried to call an EXE file from that, it automatically called `win that-EXE`, and complained that the `win` command was missing. Anyway maybe you are right in that it "has SOME support". – Yaroslav Nikitenko Nov 11 '20 at 15:30

Can Wine emulate Windows 95?

3 Answers3