Free alternative to VirtualPC?

Is there a decent, free alternative to Microsoft's Virtual PC software available? I'm trying to get some old educational software written in Director to run on XP, and it only works correctly in Windows 95/98. Compatibility mode doesn't help it, and it just throws up error messages and freezes (I believe the problem is that the software is expecting Quicktime 2, which I have installed but with no difference to the errors).

Could try WINE under Linux, but from personal experience I wouldn't be too hopeful.

No, no good. It's to run older programs on school computers that have been replaced with new machines that run XP. If it was for personal use I'd tinker away to my heart's content (in fact I'd just run it on my old 98SE Thinkpad), but I can't go installing Linux just to run one program that might get used two or three times a year. Bloody Director-made software - it never works properly on newer OSes. The only way I can see of getting it to run at all is in an emulated Windows 98 environment. I wish these teachers didn't get so attached to nine year old software... >:(

If it's on a school network, would it be possible to set up a Win98 machine with rdesktop access and run it that way?

That's not a bad idea, but no way to run more than one copy at a time then. Still, it might work in a pinch, using TightVNC or somesuch.

Well you can use VMWare to run multiple instances of Windows98.  It lets you give them all addresses on the network the host is connected to as well.  So you'd only need one VMWare license to have multiple Windows98 VNC hosts that way.

No clue about VirtualPC, since I prefer VMWare.  It was much faster than VirtualPC back when I was buying anyway.

As for free emulators I think Bochs can run Windows 95.  It was so terrible compared to the commerial ones I never used it more than for one Linux project, though.

>>2
It depends on what you're trying to run; I use DVD Decrypter and Flash Player 6 in a recent WINE, and both work great. It's certainly come a long way from when I first started playing with it in 1995-1996 (when it could barely even run Win16 programs)...

As for PC emulators, another one to try (if you don't feel like shelling out the ridiculous amount of cash for VMware, anyway) is QEMU. It's about the same speed as Virtual PC on the same hardware, though it's not quite as nice to work with.

>>7
QEMU is QUITE slower than VirtualPC if your host is a windows host.

That being said, out of all the free alternatives, QEMU is your best bet. If you have the option of setting up a virtual windows 95 enviroment and running the application on that you might get acceptable performence. Of course, if you're stuck with windows 98 then you're stuck with windows 98.

VMWare is your best bet, if you can afford all the licenses (both for each vmware copy and each OS copy) you'll need to run your app.

There used to be an open-source VMware-type project out there (FreeMWare aka plex86). Oddly enough they got a working system, but it was dog slow. Said project died before anyone actually optimized the damn thing, and repeated attempts to bring it back from the dead have failed.

Ah, the things that could have been...

>>9 which reminds me, anyone know if there's anyone still hacking on Bochs, or have they all fled to go work on qemu?

I had a similar problem once, but replace "Director" with "HyperCard". Digging around, I found some relics in a closet. Thank goodness my school was a dump.