Dosbox Probs

[britneylou]

I've downloaded the DOSbox program following the tutorial to a T, and although it's up and running, it doesn't start up with a C:\, but a Z:\ which i understand is the basic system drive. now, i sorted that prob by going to intro and mounting the c-drive, but when i search the directory it goes straight to the main c-drive directory - i.e. my whole hard drive, rather than the '4 lines of output' which the tutorial says should appear. Am i doing something cringingly wrong here?Well, i am a girl after all, and doing all this is a bit new to me.
Also, when i've tried to overlook this prob by downloading the suggested tutorial game 'flashback', i had problems with saving the game as my computer unzips files with extraction wizard rather than win-zip. Should this really be a problem? Tried with another game or two but then when it comes to running it in DOS, there's no install or run option. AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!! this probably doesnt make sense but would v much appreciate any guidance cos i want to play police quest, like, now!!!!

x x x britters x x

[A. J. Raffles]

What do you mean by four lines of output?

[britneylou]

well, it says on the tutorial, when u look at the directory of 'CDrive' (i.e., the new folder u need to create when dosbox is first created), that the directory will only give four lines of output, with "0 Files(s) 0 Bytes." but instead it opens a whole can of crap and shows everything in my hard drive. and, just to moan about something else, (altho it must be all linked) when i do the TEST folder it says to do, it attatches it to my hard drive rather than the 'CDrive' folder in Dosbox. oh dear, i'm afraid i'm quite blonde (even tho i'm a brunette).

[A. J. Raffles]

Odd. What system are you running? DOSBox works fine for me in WinXP, but I never could get it to run in Win98.

[britneylou]

winxp here too, thought it would all be okay, esp as i'm follwing the 'recipe', something i wudnt normally do. ive uninstalled and reinstalled too many times to count, as i'm sure i'm doing something wrong. oh, woe.

[Flop]

It seems to me that you've accidentally mounted your whole harddrive instead of just the C:\dos\cdrive folder. This isn't really a problem as you can just type:

cd dos
cd cdrive

and you'll be in the folder you want. But just to make sure, could you please post what your config file says under [autoexec]?

[britneylou]

oke doke, will have a go... i put exactly what it says to write under the autoexec in conf. but just to make sure i cut and pasted it on a few of my attempts in this whole shebang :


mount C C:\DOS\CDrive
mount D D:\ -t cdrom (or any other letter of your CD drive)
C:
CLS

if this isn't right then no wonder!

x x x

[BeefontheBone]

Take out the bit in parentheses to start off. Mine looks like this and I've no problems:

mount c c:\dosprogs
mount d e:\ -t cdrom
c:
cls
dir /w

Maybe you need lower case letters?

[Flop]

It's not case sensitive AFAIK. Try to remove the line that says CLS, and see what it says when you start DOSBox.

[britneylou]

New Problem!

I mentioned i was unzipping the compressed file of flashback with extraction wizard, but when i try and extract it to the dosbox cdrive it comes up with an error window saying:

file skipped unknown compression method

and won't extract it, even to another location - i've tried them all!

[Flop]

I've never tried extraction wizard, but I'd recommend using winzip. You can get it here. (http://www.download.com/3000-2250-10003164.html)

[britneylou]

ok, tried that, but still comes up with z:\. To get it onto c:\ i type

mount c c:\

c:

which is what it says to do in intro. i'm getting confused between c-drive hard drive and dosbox cdrive. when it's meant to open with c:\ which one is it referring to? i know this may sound very stupid, so please bear with me!

[Flop]

Okay, there's your problem. When you type that you remount the c drive, and override what you typed in the config.

To change to the c drive, just type:

c:

None of that mounting stuff. :)

[britneylou]

right, tried dosprogs and it says it doesn't exist! i remember it saying that last time i tried it. oh dear...

isnt winzip expensive? i really cant be doing with buying the damn thing! or is that me being pernickerty...

[Flop]

Originally posted by britneylou@Jun 26 2005, 04:51 PM
right, tried dosprogs and it says it doesn't exist! i remember it saying that last time i tried it. oh dear...

isnt winzip expensive? i really cant be doing with buying the damn thing! or is that me being pernickerty...
Well, if you want to mount c:\dosprogs as your c drive in DOSBox, you need to actually have a folder on your real c drive called dosprogs, otherwise it won't work.

Try just using the same config as you did before, and then when you start dosbox, if you're in the Z drive, just type:

c:

And there is a trial version of winzip, which you can download for free. :)

Edit: I can't figure out why it doesn't change to the c drive by itself, since you have a line that says "c:" in the config. I suspect that the directories you created might not be named right (I've seen other people using that tutorial, who accidentally created a directory called "c:\dos\cddrive" instead of "c:\dos\cdrive". I'd still suggest removing the CLS line from the config, since that line basically ruins your chances of finding out what's wrong because you don't get to see any error messages.

[britneylou]

c: doesnt work, it just says 'c drive doesnt exist'. i've doubled checked all my dos folders and they're all named correctly. i'll get winzip and have a liitle go that end, just hope i can make everything meet in the middle so i get to play something.


Thanks to everyone who's been helping! Its probably my crappy computer, which is so old i'm surprised it doesn't run on the original dos os. :)

[britneylou]

Joy of joys i've finally figured a (albeit rather tricky) way of playing the games...!!!!
:D

Got flashback working but cudnt be bothered to play around with the setup...sooooo, went and found the holy grail, which is POLICE QUEST! have it all downloaded, unzipped and ready to play on ms dos...
BUT...
I can't actually run it because i have no idea what to enter into dos to play the game...there's no install or setup or any file which makes sense. Any ideas?

[Data]

press tab inside dosbox when you are inside the right directory.

[britneylou]

Cheers! wow, memory lane, here i come!

:D

[The Fifth Horseman]

Flashback was packed with a slightly different method then standard. Try 7-Zip, WinRar or Total Commander.

[Rogue]

Data,
Do you guys still have plans to repack all game archives? (If I remember correctly, there were some games in folders, other without folder and there are couples of compression methods for zip games)

Repack should standardize archives.

[Data]

yeah. but waiting for a hardware change before I attempt to use 7z on the download server

[blastradius14]

I like winrar the most, you can get it here: http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar35b5.exe.
It can uncompress 7z files, but I am not sure if winzip can.

edit: this program is MUCH more useful than windows's uncompress utility.

[BeefontheBone]

7z tends to get slightly better compression, but there's not a lot in it really. Its chief advantage is that it's comepletely free, unlike winzip or winrar. Personally I use all 3.

[Rogue]

I use all of them too, and just as BB said, 7zip is free, while others are 'evoluation' versions....

[Eagle of Fire]

Please get back on topic and/or start a new thread about this. This thread been offtopic long enough now.

[Pleimion]

Hi,

I was wondering: how can I get DosBox to run in fullscreen mode? The readme file is too hard to figure out.

[Data]

alt-enter

[Pleimion]

Thanx

[The Fifth Horseman]

Also in Dosbox.conf, where it reads "fullscreen=false", change the entry to "fullscreen=true". You might then want to have "fullfixed=true" as well.

[blastradius14]

If miss lou returns with a problem I'm sure we will solve it, but right now she hasn't posted here in a while. I'm not exactly sure we were off topic considering you have to use uncompression utilites to even start playing most of the games on this site.

Dosbox problems is a great topic, but it seems less people have problems or they don't know where to go :bleh:

Or they don't like this thread

Now is that :ot: ? LOL

[Eagle of Fire]

Yes you are.

Talking about compression utility might be related somehow to the thread, but having half a page worth of posts talking about it when the relation to the problem posted by the thread starter is extremely low to non-existant is something I consider an off topic discussion.

If someone have a problem similar to those in this thread then by all mean start your own personnal thread.