I have BeOS 4.5 on disk and want to use iit with VPC 6. I
have created an empty hard drive and got the setup going
from the disk. When I get to the installer page that
requires you to select a volume, no volume is on the drop
down menu. On the options menu, only the hardware
volumes are shown, not virtual ones so I can't complete
the install. What can I do?

Not sure older versions worked with R4.5 and VPC6. The first I heard of was BeOS max distro and MS's VPC2004. Might see if there are cached pages on the beos max web site. They did have a how to but the site has been down.

I seem to recall VPC 6 being able to install BeOS (i saw an article on how to do it *somewhere* on the web), but i bet you'd need at least 5x or up..try installing Deved or PE5 first, if that's successful you can always mount your 4.5 disk to get any proprietary programs off them, or format the virtual drive in BeFS, antd try then..
You could also rename the drive file image.be - don't know if it would work , but if it , in fact, does see your physical harddrives, it may work...
I can't tell you from personal experience, as i bought a used copy of the VPC6 upgrade, in order to do just the same as you..but turns out it'll only upgrade VPC5, not version 4 (what i've got)..rats !
P.S. If i find that article i'll post the link..

Obviously, i think i believe you think i said what you want to believe, but i think you didn't believe what i think i really said...

OK...I've now installed VPC 7, created an empty drive and
began to install BeOS 4.5. This version gives me an option
when I get to the drive selection installer page of '15
GB(dos)' as the disk it would choose to install on. The
other choices look like the Mac volume and a non-
existant floppy. This is an improvement on version 6.
However, it give lots of warnings about initialising the
disk...it can't format the Mac HFS volume from the
emulator, can it?

I had beos installed in vpc7 freeview. I think I just made a 1 gig virtual partition and told it to be a fat. Then when running the beos disk I just pointed it to the virtual partiton and it was just like any other beos install. The only choice that may matter might be how you are booting it. Are you using a dos partiton to use zbeos and loadbeos.com? My copy of R4.5 I think requires floppies. I would agree with above. Get the Developers edition installed and then try to just delete files and then install on the formatted BFS in virtual partition.

You don't want Mac format..

You are using an x86 box aren't you?

OK...I've now installed VPC 7, created an empty drive and
began to install BeOS 4.5. This version gives me an option
when I get to the drive selection installer page of '15
GB(dos)' as the disk it would choose to install on. The
other choices look like the Mac volume and a non-
existant floppy. This is an improvement on version 6.
However, it give lots of warnings about initialising the
disk...it can't format the Mac HFS volume from the
emulator, can it?

The mac volume might be the other part of the beos CD. It has a mac volume on it. The installer ought to see the fat partition that you created in VPC. You didn't use a 15 gig virtual partiton did you?

Well now... I finally got version 5PE loaded through
Windows 98 as an application. It runs OK but it gives a
'graphics card not supported ' message and the mouse is
fidgety. Any ideas?

You can either install vesa accepted program from bebits or at boot up choose from safe mode. See wiki at bebits "vesasafemode"