Problem playing DOS games for programmers

The Vault Dweller

The Vault Dweller

always looking for water.
Ratty...Sander...can you help me?

One day months ago my DOS games stopped working. It was horrific since I had just found Wasteland online and had played it a few hours and was already loving it. Then one time while starting it I got this message:

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C:\DOCUME~1\Chris\Desktop\SHORTC~1.PIF
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application.
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Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
It sounds as if you are just running dos games straight in windows, which isn't a good idea in any case, because even if you get some games to work that way, games with high memory requirements won't ever work.

The best solution is of course to get an old computer exclusively for dos (maybe a dualboot with windows 98), but since that is probably too mcuh hassle for most people, I'd recommend getting one or both of these programs:

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/

They are pretty easy to use, and AFAIK the vast majority of dos games work on either one or the other. It may take a bit of tweaking for some games, but personally I've been able to run every game I've tried with one of these programs.

Btw, if it happened months ago, how come you waited till now to ask?
 
Uh-oh.

I had this problem before as well. Just before my hard-drive crashed and I had to reformat, losing all my data. Back up everything important that you can, before trying to fix. There may be a way to fix it, but I'm not sure, seeing as my efforts to fix it corrupted my operating system.

Also, you may want to download the Linux bootable cd. It has a full operating system to help you out recovering data if you OS fails.
 
Thanks a lot guys. Ya Dove I made sure to back up...the warning was nice.

Um Flop. Thanks for the programs...I downloaded them, but I have no idea how they work. The first asks me to type in intro and I do all the stuff after that, but once it says I can run the stuff in my windows folder I have no idea what to run or how to.

Sorry...Im computer literate. I type at 45 wpm, can use any standard program, surf the web, and even do hardware work, but DOS and the like just scares me.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Well, Dosbox emulates the dos shell, so you need to know the basic dos commands to use it. This shouldn't be a big problem, though. If you open the windows command prompt (start menu --> run --> type cmd) and then type help, it lists the commands and their functions.

In dosbox, you need to mount drives. If, for example, you have your wasteland game in a folder called c:\games\wasteland, you should type:

mount C c:\games\wasteland

the wasteland folder is now your c drive in dosbox, and you just need to type the name of the exe file to start playing.

VDMsound is somewhat easier to use, since it has a GUI (I don't remember if it comes with one, these days, or if you still have to download one seperately). Basically, once you have installed VDMsound, you can just rightclick the exe file in windows, and choose "run with VDMsound". This might not work for all games, though, and you'll sometimes have to make a specific setup for different games.

But basically, all this information is available in the readme files for the programs, so I'd recommend reading those, for further information.
 
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