

Install a CD-ROM driver into MS-DOS so that you can mount a CD as D:\ for example.But basically, a floppy disk boot is going to be used one way or another.
DOSBOX WINDOWS 3.1 DRIVERS
Or if you have a DOS boot floppy that has CD-ROM drivers built in, boot that and then mount an ISO containing all the unpacked MS-DOS floppy files.

DOSBOX WINDOWS 3.1 ZIP FILE
On this page I have an "unpacked" Windows 3.11 install folder (it's a single zip file that contains all files from all Win3.11 floppy disks). MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 were originally distributed as floppy disks, so no CD-based installation is supported. Note that two VMs can not be powered on at the same time if they have the same disk attached! Windows XP or Linux) which does support guest additions. Power off the DOS VM, and attach its hard disk as a secondary drive on a newer VM (i.e.For a host-to-guest only transfer, create an ISO image (some CD burners on Linux let you turn a folder into an ISO file instead of burning to disk you'd select your folder, right-click "burn to disk" and on the burn:/// URI the button to actually burn would pop up a window where one option is to make an ISO instead.Create a floppy disk image you attach to the VM to copy files to/from, then detach it from the VM and mount it as a loopback device on the host OS to access files.If the networking works, try an FTP server you can connect to from within the virtual machine.VirtualBox Guest Additions don't support any version of Windows older than Windows 2000/XP, so shared folders won't work. The Legacy PC Project - guides for installing MS-DOS and Windows for Workgroups on old PCs.Instead, download all the components and install it yourself. I'm no longer hosting the bundled tarball that contains all the files + a VirtualBox preinstalled disk image to clean up disk space on my server. Find a video driver that supports more than 16 colors (more info here).Disable hardware virtualization (in the System/Acceleration tab in the VM settings).Start Windows in standard mode ( win /s).

If you have issues with erratic mouse movement within Windows 3.1 on VirtualBox, some solutions are (from here): If you want to download the components separately (DOS, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and the drivers) you can find individual links on my MS-DOS page. Sometimes you'll have to go to the previous disk instead. When you get a "Can't read file" error, you'll usually swap in the next numbered disk and hit enter. Windows 3.1 can still be installed from these images, it will just require more disk juggling. I got ahold of this version of Windows 3.1 from a CD image instead of floppies, so I had to convert them to floppy images myself, and not all the files fit on all the disks (there should only be 6 disk images but there's 7 in this tarball). The version of Windows in this tarball is 3.1 - not Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (for that, download it separately from my MS-DOS page).
