How to Transport a Windows98 installation?

Discussion in 'Parallels Transporter' started by Ken Cunningham, Mar 7, 2007.

  1. Ken Cunningham

    Ken Cunningham Member

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    After the success I had with my XP transporter experience, I'm looking to try moving an older Windows 98 machine into a Parallels virtual machine as well. This machine has a collection of custom software on it that I'm reluctant to move to a new system, and works nicely set up as it is, so I'd rather not upgrade it to XP.

    Has anyone figured out a method to move a Windows98 system into a hard disc image? Transporter doesn't appear to work on Win98, and I couldn't get the VMWare equivalent to install on Win98 either... any tricks out there?

    Thanks,

    Ken
     
  2. Ken Cunningham

    Ken Cunningham Member

    Messages:
    19
    Success

    Success! Although you can't use Transporter, there is a workable method to move a Windows 98 System into Parallels.

    I used the free "g4u" program ("Ghost for Linux") at http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/. This comes as a CD image, or two floppies. I used the floppies to boot the PC, and migrated the hard drive as a disk image to the mac's FTP server. I then booted Parallels using the CD image of g4u, and migrated the drive image file from the FTP server back onto a new, blank hard drive image.

    A couple of reboots of Win98 to install the right parallels drivers, then installed Parallels Tools, and then installed the Windows 98 video and sound drivers.

    Turns out there is a bug in the current Windows 98 video driver that causes a crash at Parallels shutdown -- until this is fixed, I downgraded this to the previous working stable build of Parallels (version 1970) that doesn't have this bug.
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2007
  3. catmistake

    catmistake Member

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    27
    congrats

    That's some clever hacking there! But your post is a little too detailed. You think you could be any less specific about the process?
    /sarcasm

    What do you mean "migrated the hard drive as a disk image to the mac's FTP server"??
    You mean you ftp-ed the files from the drive to the Mac's filesystem... onto... what kind of disk image? Or, from your booted 98 install, you ran some migration utility and saved the resulting file to a ftp-mount running off the Mac? Its not like there's any distinction between the Mac's filesystem whether you ftp a file to it or afp or smb it. Its the same HFS+ fs!

    Seriously, I can't make heads or tails of this. I doubt anyone can. If you have the time, a true step by step would be titties (doesn't seem like its that many steps, but your steps here make no sense).

    (sorry for the belligerence... just a little frustrated)
     
  4. misterjangles

    misterjangles Member

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    97
    g4u

    Actually, Ken's explanation make sense. g4u only has 2 commands that you need to deal with and it's pretty simple. you only need to read the first section of g4u instructions (less than a page) so you understand what you're doing.

    1. boot your old machine using the g4u boot disk. run the uploaddisk command to backup the entire disk to an FTP server

    2. boot up a new parallels virtual machine from the g4u disk. run slurpdisk to restore the image

    If you don't already have a local FTP server, the Mac FTP sharing is perfect for this - you can just turn it on temporarily.
     
  5. misterjangles

    misterjangles Member

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    97
    burn image

    btw, to create a bootable cd from the g4u image file you can enter this from the mac command line:

    hdiutil burn g4u-2.3.iso

    if you have a blank cd in the drive, it will make the bootable cd. oh, make sure you cd into the directory where you saved g4u-2.3.iso
     
  6. Ken Cunningham

    Ken Cunningham Member

    Messages:
    19
    The instructions you seek are with the software, on the g4u website, including a step-by-step walkthrough.

    My contribution is to tell anyone interested in migrating a Windows98 PC to Parallels that this method worked well for me.

    BTW, you don't need to burn a CD image of G4U to boot Parallels -- just mount the G4U iso as a CD directly, and boot from that.

    :)
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2007
  7. jprowse

    jprowse Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    w00t and humble detail request

    Ken! You are a superstar! I am trying to move a win98 development environment to a VM, and am hoping this will do the trick, but my situation may be trickier.

    I have 3 partitions on my drive: WinXP test partition, Win98 development partition, and a data partition in the extended partition (don't ask... it's weird). I'm trying to move just the Win98 partition to a new VM, but whenever I do this with g4u, whether moving it as an entire drive, or just as a partition, Parallels chokes at the "Booting from hard drive..." line during the boot up process.

    I was wondering what kind of setup you were migrating. Single partition? How did you setup your Parallels VM? As win98, or "custom" or "other"? How big did you make your hard drive, and was it a plain disk or an expanding disk? When you were finished the g4u process, did you just stop the VM, or was there some last step you did to finish the process? Did you need to boot the VM with the win98 install CD to get the drivers going, or did the VM load up and just "detect new hardware"?

    I've already got a post up on the g4u board, but nobody seems to be using the software in this creative way yet. Thanks in advance for your insights,

    :-j
    Josh
     
  8. Ken Cunningham

    Ken Cunningham Member

    Messages:
    19
    I moved a Windows98 partition from the source machine of about 6GB onto the Mac's build-in FTP server, then onto a new parallels hard disk image that was the same size as the one I was copying from, using G4U as described above. It was the only partition on the source machine, but I don't think that matters. I set parallels as a 'win98' machine.

    This was six months ago now, and I didn't record 'step-by-step' instructions while doing it -- the walkthrough will have to be done by someone else. (If you frown and note you always record your shenanigans step-by-step, more power to you :> ).

    I vaguely recall that I may have had to set the boot partition on the parallels hard drive to the new partition I had just created. I would have booted Parallels using a DOS boot floppy disk image mounted as Drive A, ran FDISK to set the active partition to the one just created, and then reran FDISK /MBR to write the master boot record onto the parallels virtual "hard drive".

    I was aware of these instructions for a product called "xxcopy" similar to G4U, and had read them over prior to starting:
    http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy10.htm

    and this bit of information was noted as well;

    FDISK /MBR rewrites the Master Boot Record
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q69013/

    Ultimately it worked well, and continues to work just fine today.
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2007
  9. jbh001

    jbh001 Member

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    87
    Windows 98 video driver problem

    A work-around for the video driver problem has been posted here.
     
  10. DaleE

    DaleE Member

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    Looks like this is version 3 of parallels. The DOS batch file still works fine with versions 4 and 5.

    Do you or anyone know where to get a sound driver that works for version 4 and 5 of parallels desktop for mac that works with Windows 98SE?
    In device manager of Windows XP for MacBook Pro 17 it is showing Intel 82801 AA/AB/BA/CA AC'97 Audio Controller
    In device manager of Windows XP for iMac 24 it is showing Intel 82801 BA/BAM AC'97 Audio Controller.

    I have tried 3 AC'97 driver so far from Realteck and VIA but do not work. Have been unable to locate the Intel drivers.
     
  11. DCD

    DCD Bit poster

    Messages:
    1
    Have just tried to migrate W98 using g4u. I have copied the disk and FTP'd it. Have created the virtual machine using Parallels 5 with 4gb hard disk and 256mb memory and shared networking. Booted with g4u and used option 1 to start it and it gets to fining an ip address and seizes up. see image any ideas?
     

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  12. Efrain

    Efrain Junior Member

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    11
    What are the pros and cons of Windows XP, compared to Windows 98?
     

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