Would it be possible to transfer a Win98SE installation into a virtualized environment? For example, if I decide to get a modern machine with 2k/XP/Vista/Linux (one that doesn't support Win98SE on a hardware level, PCI-E, etc), would it be possible to transfer my Win98SE installation into a virtualized environment on that machine? Has anyone tried this?

Couldn't I just delete the hardware subsection in the Win98SE registry (kind of like you do when you swap motherboards) and let the Win98SE installation redetect the virtual hardware? Or is there more to it?

You can still find configurations that supports Win98 and are recent (well it's true that it's hard and complicated but it worth it) Using a virtual machine is slow, does not use your PC capacities like a true OS and won't let you benefit from 3d acceleration.

Anyway, if you really want to do this, you've got several solutions.

Easiest one is probably to use your partition with Win98 as your VM hard disk (use physical disk instead of a virtual one).
If you don't want to stay like this, then you can clone your OS on a virtual HD from inside the VM and disable physical HD support. You'll get your clone Win98 working on a virtual drive that will become primary HD. HTH

There's always a virtual machine. VMware Workstation.

I use VMWare Server to virtualize all versions of 9x that I use and test. The only downside is that 3d graphics acceleration is practically impossible, so if you're a gamer, you're screwed and have to use the system itself.

At work, I've virtualized our server to run Ubuntu Linux 6.06.1, with VMWare Server running on top of it, with a converted image of our old server running on it (Windows 2003 server with apache/mysql/php4 installed). It works great, and is honestly more secure and efficient than running win2k3 on the box as the only OS.

Search MSFN for the free P2V tools... or better yet, here's a link: http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/?page_id=174

That's the guide I followed to convert our old server to a virtual disc image. On the plus side, this guide offers a completely free way to move an installation over to VMWare.

BTW Virtual PC 2007 is free download from M$ site.

Use that if you want a simpler less resource-consuming alternative to VMware.

AFAIK Virtual PC 2007 is still beta and available to beta testers only. Link to Connect.

Free download is for Virtual PC 2004 with SP1 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition.
Petr

My mistake, yes it's '04.