Problem with screen redrawing at DOS app in VmWare Player

Question

I have very old DOS Application (CadSoft Eagle - PCB Designer) and I want to work with it on my workstation with Windows 7. Then I install Windows 98 and that software into VmWare Player.

But that software has serious problem with redrawing screen. It's very slow in comparison with my Intel Celeron 333MHz with Windows 98.

I have same problem if I try to use DOSBox on Windows XP (same Celeron 333MHz).

I also trying run this application directly on Windows XP (same Celeron 333MHz) with compatibility mod set to "Windows 98", but I get "(0Dh): General Protection Fault".

Can someone give me good advice how I solve that?

Answer 1

This is a typical problem of having the wrong HAL.dll installed, usually if you go to full screen instead of window the update problems go aawy.

Go through your windows installation disc and you should find a whole bunch of files matching hal*.dll (or hal*.dl_ which you will have to decompress) and copy them to c:\windows\system32\hal.dll, do it one by one replacing the existing file until you get one that works. Usually this is caused by running old operating systems on modern processors.

Answer 2

Do you have the VMWare tools installed in your guest?

From VMware's site:

Don't Forget VMware Tools

It is very important that you install VMware Tools in the guest operating system.

With the VMware Tools SVGA driver installed, Workstation supports significantly faster graphics performance.

If you don't have VMWare Workstation a free 30 day trial is available.