BleepingComputer.com: Installing W95 in a Virtual Machine

I have downloaded and installed the Microsoft Virtual Machine 2007, which is described in some places as being compatible with Vista, but is described as not being compatible during the setup. This is just the first problem which I have. Having read various idiot's guides on using the VM, I continue, and have set up the VM Hard Drive, but the guides just tell me to install the required system onto the VHD. I'm trying to install W95, purely for gameplaying reasons, I'm afraid, and I've got my (Authentic) W95 disk in the E Drive, but I just can't work out how to get what's on the disk in E onto the VHD. I would appreciate the next step down after the idiot's guide, as the IG is obviously not enough for me.

At the top of the VM window will be a menu item for CD.
From there you can capture your CD drive - or you can mount an ISO image.
Then you can reboot (using the Action menu item...Ctrl-Alt-Del).

I dunno if the Win95 disk is bootable tho' - if so, then you won't be able to install it that way.
If that is the case, you'll have to have a floppy drive in order to boot from the floppy install disks.

Thanks for trying to help usasma, but I have no floppies (or floppy drive) to run the setup from, just the W95 cd, which doesn't seem to be bootable. It looks as if I'll just have to learn to live without my old turn-based-strategy games, and get used to RTS, although I don't think my aging reflexes are up to it!

Nope, there are ways around this. For example you can go to http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm and download the floppy image.
Then you can borrow a USB floppy drive and use that to start the installation (if your VM will recognize the USB device).
Or, you can mess around with putting the floppy image on a CD (and making it bootable) in order to start the installation that way.

Another option is to install a later version of Windows that does support the boot from CD feature. The games may run in there without any changes - or you may have to run them in compatibility mode.

The day that Vista came out we had a customer that would only buy it if they could play their Omar Sharif Bridge game (from WfW 3.11) on it. I set it to work in compatibility mode for Windows 95 and it worked great!

I installed Windows 95 in a virtual machine once. I'm not sure if the disk was bootable, but I think you can run the setup by using DOS.
I believe that DOS is still copywrited so it is illegal to download it from the internet, but you could use something like FreeDOS.

http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/

Thank you both for your guidance. I haven't taken things any further yet, but I'll take a deep breath, and try out your suggestions. I appreciate your efforts to help me. Anyway, here goes!