How to run old CDs on modern Windows?

Microsoft released a ton of those old CD-ROM bundles back in the 90s, and nowadays you can find them all for free online. I’m running Windows 7, so getting the Windows 95 versions up and running is pretty straightforward—no real headache there—but I've hit a bit of a wall trying to figure out how to launch the ones designed for Windows 3.1.
I tried scouring Google for a solution, but nothing really clicked. For instance, I managed to download a version of Windows 3.1 that comes bundled with DOSBox, which launches automatically when you click it. I even successfully installed the CD-ROM software inside that Windows 3.1 environment—the icon actually showed up and everything! But here's the catch: whenever I try to click the icon, it just sits there asking me to insert the CD into the drive... So, I guess I need to find a way to somehow simulate a physical CD-ROM drive within that emulation layer.

I did stumble upon some info about using VirtualBox, though I haven't actually sat down to test that out yet. Does anyone here have experience with that? Any idea if that would actually work for this kind of thing?

Peter Reyes33 said:...

I stumbled upon a way to install certain programs via VirtualBox, but I haven't actually given it a shot yet. Does anyone here have experience with this? Any idea how it actually plays out?

From what I've seen in YouTube videos, it seems to run pretty smoothly on virtual machines.

Man, you’re really taking me back to my glory days 😁
.... I think I still have an old PATA hard drive lying around somewhere (only 250MB!) running DOS 5.0 with Windows 3.11 installed. Back then, I could just boot into it whenever I needed to get my CD-ROM actually working properly.

Honestly, virtual machines are the way to go if you want the real deal. They simulate the old hardware much better—modern rigs are just too beefy and fundamentally different from what was out back then, plus modern drivers don't play nice with those ancient graphics setups at all...
If you’re actually looking to relive the whole installation headache, stick with a VM, but if you just want to mess around for a bit, you can run them right in your browser. Here, check these out:

Windows 3.1 http://playdosgamesonline.com/windows-31.html (you can toss this into full-screen mode and it pretty much feels like you aren't even using a web browser 😁 )

Windows 95 http://playdosgamesonline.com/Windows-95-4-00-950.html (runs a little sluggish for me, though...
)
Macintosh https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pce-js-apps/

There's probably more out there somewhere, just gotta dig through the archives... 🙂