Ok. First off, I'm probably the least experienced person on this forum so please, be gentle :-)

I have a program for reading codes etc. off my car but it must use a Win 98 or XP or 7 OS - which I do not run. I run LinuxMint 17 Qiana on my laptop and there is where I will be using this program. Some time ago, I dl'd VMware free version and created a couple Windows VM's, one was 98 and the other 7 Ultimate. Both ran fine for a while but eventually started wonking out on me! Can't remember details but trust me, they just got stupid. I want to completely start over by removing the VMware program and then install VirtualBox instead and create a Win vm from there.

1. How do I remove an installed program from Linux that was not acquired from a repository? Where in Linux is the equivalent to "Add or Remove Programs" in Control Panel in Win?

2. When creating a Windows vm, where do I acquire the keys to validate? I used ones that I found on the web for my previous tries but perhaps that's exactly WHY the vm's basically stopped working properly..

3. Any other suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated. 8D

You don't need to uninstall VMPlayer unless you really want to. Both are quite similar and I can't see an advantage of one over the other for most people.

Installing VirtualBox is sort of easy but each distro may need to have unique tasks.
Maybe another user can detail all the steps for that.

You use the keys that came with the Windows media. Any other method is unlikely to work for more than 30 days.


There is a way to run some windows apps in linux. Codeweavers sells a product and they support a free version called wine.

So, thanks jefro for your reply. For whatever reason, I have not been able to get Wine to work for me! It is installed on my laptop but when I've tried to use it, no love!?

VirtualBox is free.

The dowloaded (non paid ) version has a evaluation period. That may be the cause of wonking.

There is no evaluation period for VirtualBox (it is absolutely free for non-commercial use), do you mean the evaluation version of VMWare?
As for windows keys as asked in the original question -- if you want windows then buy a key, it's a simple as that. As I found out though it is difficult to get hold of Windows 7 as everyone hates Windows 8 sop much that all the discs and keys seem to have been sold at least once.

I believe VMWare was what the previous reply insinuated. As far as having a key, I do still have my original recovery disks for my laptop as it was purchased with win7 and the key is on bottom of the case. I suppose I could use that...?

I'm still not clear how I go about completely removing vmware. I've tried doing it through a terminal with the command: sudo apt-get remove VMware. This did not work. Suggestions/help!

How did you install VMWare? If you used a .deb file then apt-get remove ought to work fine -- if you did install a .deb what errors did you receive when trying to remove it?
You may or may not get away with using the key from your laptop -- I find Windows can be funny with license keys. Since Windows costs money though nobody on this forum can tell you anything but "buy it" as anything else is illegal in the country this forum is hosted and in the countries most of us are posting from.
Personally I've been using the free evaluation of Windows 10 in a VM for a while but I understand that it is, basically, spyware so I am loath to do anything much with it.

I retrieved VMware from their website and just installed that way. It's been a while since doing it so I really cannot remember the details! This is why I'm wanting to completely remove anything VMware and start fresh...

I know the feeling! I installed VMWare myself from the website and don't recall how it was done either...
Perhaps find out from the website how to uninstall it? Most binary installers have an uninstall option, for example.

Well that's a good idea....Thx!

For future inquiries, I have found how to delete/remove VMware workstation from my system:

sudo vmware-installer --list-products (to get the version number)

sudo vmware-installer -u vmware-workstation <product version #>

NOW, to start over with a properly installed vm...!

Glad you worked it out and sorry to not be of more help.
Don't forget to mark the thread ans solved using the link at the top.
With VirtualBox you can choose between using Debian's own repositories or using Oracles's. I use Oracle's and also install the non-free additions* which seems to need to be done by running VB as root.

*they are free as in beer to non-commercial users but not open source. The rest of VirtualBox is, I think, open source.

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Thank you 273 for your help! It was indeed ...helpful! Dale

Well dangit, guess I should have held off marking this thread SOLVED! I'm having a devil of a time getting getting VirtualBox working. I tried to install from my repository but the only one available was x86 and I'm running a 64 bit system. Actually I did install but I simply couldn't open it. Don't remember the errors but trust me, it wouldn't work!

I eventually went to Oracle website and downloaded the Linux 64 bit version then created two vm's, Windows 98 and XP. While I do still have an old XP installation disk, I have no idea where/what the product key is. When I started the 'player' to install the OS, I got an error stating that there was no installation media present so it halted the process! Thought I could just install the 'trial' version of 98 from the 'included' trial OS's but noooo....ARGH! Why is this sooo difficult? It seems it should be straight-forward but I'm sure not finding that to be the case...

If somebody could point me to a nice step-by-step 'How-To" install a virtual machine, please share!

I have to assume that your virtual machine application is installed correctly and that you mean create a client.

To create a client you'd need to either use an ISO of your (hopefully bootable cd/dvd) or use the cd/dvd directly.

Win98 never had a trial period. It used the key on the box. That is so old you have to also consider your virtual hardware. Sata won't work off boot.

So, no media found means that you haven't attached your media to the machine and/or media is not set at bootable media.

I can't find a simple how to on this but go through the settings to attach your cd to the client first.

More simply is to create an iso of the cd and attach it to settings.