gemillam said:
I have a Windows 98 SE Full install disk that I got off of eBay, just with the idea that I was going to use it on my new Intel iMac once some genius figured out how to make Vanderpool work on it

. Well, I got Workstation configured and it's seeing my CD drive, but it isn't recognizing it as a bootable CD. Isn't all Windows SE Full Installation disks bootable? Is there something I need to do that I am unaware of?
NO Windows 9x (including Windows Me) CDROM is bootable (thanks, MS). You need to boot from a floppy and then prepare the HDD before running SETUP.EXE off the CDROM root folder. To make matters more idiotic, you need a recent (post DOS 6.22) boot floppy that can support FAT32 and large HD partitions.
So, you need to:
1. Locate a bootable DOS floppy disk image that supports large FAT32 paritions. The best candidate is the "Recovery Disk" floppy created during Windows 9x Setup (but of course you cannot run that yet!! -- I know, it's ridiculous).
2. Boot the VM using that floppy and also insert the WIndows CD. Make sure you choose to boot with CDROM support.
3. You should now have several drive letters: A: will be the floppy, another will be a small Ramdisk with some tools on it, and another will be the CDROM. They will be C:, D: or E:. Try a DIR command to find each.
4. Execute the FDISK command to partition the hard disk. You can pretty much walk through the defaults to create a single large partition (note: I advise keeping the HDD size to 2GB or less). At the end you will be told to reboot. Do so.
5. Boot from floppy again and again choose CDROM support. After booting enter "FORMAT C:" to format the HD. The format process will run and at the end you get to name the volume (choose anything).
6. If all has gone well, you should now be able to do a DIR C: and see an empty hard disk.
7. Now, locate the CDROM image drive. It will be D: or E: Look for "SETUP.EXE' in the root.
8. Switch to the CDROM drive ("CD D:" or "CD E:"), then enter "SETUP".
9. Follow the Windows setup directions.
Finally, on my copy of PW I had to tinker with the boot order settings to get it to boot from floppy: choose floppy boot first.
Good luck!
--Tim