DOS problem....
Okay, so a while back I picked up a disc in a charity shop full of old PD demos and games for PC....most of which run in DOS...
When I first started trying them out, they were working fine on my PC (which runs Vista)...but now, even if I try game that worked previously, I'm getting this message when I try to start them up!
Any ideas why this has started to happen, and any way I can get the games to run again?
When I first started trying them out, they were working fine on my PC (which runs Vista)...but now, even if I try game that worked previously, I'm getting this message when I try to start them up!
Any ideas why this has started to happen, and any way I can get the games to run again?
Post edited by deadpan666 on
Comments
An' you know what they said?
Well, some of it was true!
Yeah, I've got a few games that start automatically in DOSbox, and they all work fine...
It's the fact that the games from the CD worked before and now they don't, and every thing I look up tells me it's because I use Vista...so how did they work fine until today?? Very confusing!
AFAIK, Vista introduced some changes into video drivers and NTVDM that made harder playing with DOS games so I won't expect them to work. Also, 16 bit programs (DOS, Windows 3.x and even some Windows 95 games) won't work at all on 64 bit Windows.
Maybe some update from Microsoft or a video driver update made fail your games. Or maybe you could try to run those games as administrator, or put them on Windows 98 compatibility mode.
The safest way to run a DOS program on Windows is using DOSbox, as I said. Keep on mind that NTVDM won't provide complete VGA emulation, and sound blaster emulation is bad (unless you use VDMSound, but it is not available for Vista).
IMHO, the latest Windows OS that could run DOS programs easily was XP... I didn't even try to do it on Vista.
(BTW, VDMSound included some tricks to run DOS games on their documentation... maybe some of your problems are solved there)
An' you know what they said?
Well, some of it was true!
Well, thanks for the tips..I'll try and get them to work again tomorrow! :)
I've only got room for one PC to be rigged up at a time, and the other one won't do anything online, so yeah..I've got one, but I can't use it really! :)
there are some nice ega games, yer I know the amiga blah blah blah.. but sod changing 14 disks on fate of Atlantis etc ;)
You were lucky that they ran on Vista but now, well I won't be original, just use Dosbox ;)
It's the video driver model. There are various suggestions on that StackOverflow thread, including disabling hardware acceleration or loading an XP-model video driver.
vogons.org
is a great forum for collecting and using old PC hardware. Plus it's home of the official DOSBox forums, and also has lots of advice on getting old games to run on new hardware, and vice versa. It also manages to stay relatively free of trolls for some reason, perhaps because most trolls are young, and Vogons users are mainly older.
Mark
Repair Guides. Spanish Hardware site.
WoS - can't download? Info here...
former Meulie Spectrum Archive but no longer available :-(
Spectranet: the TNFS directory thread
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
I was expecting the first post to be "...and a b*tch ain't one"
Even 10 years ago, on Windows XP, i experienced some old Win9x games that refused to run because of the 16-bit / 32-bit barrier - one that comes to mind is Alone in the Dark.
They were all budget re-releases though, so it was not a great loss ;)
Feel free to help yourself to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 Manual.pdf
Poetry? Along the lines of "Ode To A Small
Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning"?
Feel free to help yourself to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 Manual.pdf