Languish.org

General Category => Off the Record => Computer Affairs => Topic started by: Valdemar on April 01, 2010, 03:00:05 PM

Title: DOS games under Vista?
Post by: Valdemar on April 01, 2010, 03:00:05 PM
Hi,

Just stumbeld across an old favourite of mine, Tanks! and downloaded it.

I sued to be able to make it run, even under XP, but now with Vista I can't. The program starts up fine, but it only flashes a black box briefly, then disapears.

According to the website it should run under vista, though without sound, but Ican't get it to run.

I've tried running it under a compatibility as every flavour of Win from 95 to XP SP2, but no luck..

Any ideas?

V
Title: Re: DOS games under Vista?
Post by: Ed Anger on April 01, 2010, 05:00:19 PM
Try DOSbox?
Title: Re: DOS games under Vista?
Post by: DontSayBanana on April 01, 2010, 10:47:06 PM
DOSBox is Vista-safe.  Also, you can tack on a nifty front-end and not have to go hunting around the mess of directories in C: that DOS games create. ;)
Title: Re: DOS games under Vista?
Post by: Valdemar on April 02, 2010, 02:37:39 AM
PLease explain? What does DOS box do (other than simulate a DOS enviroment) do I start it up, then start up games from in there or what?

V
Title: Re: DOS games under Vista?
Post by: sbr on April 02, 2010, 02:38:56 AM
Quote from: Valdemar on April 02, 2010, 02:37:39 AM
PLease explain? What does DOS box do (other than simulate a DOS enviroment) do I start it up, then start up games from in there or what?

V

I use it but don't know that much about it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSbox
Title: Re: DOS games under Vista?
Post by: Syt on April 02, 2010, 01:58:16 PM
Quote from: Valdemar on April 02, 2010, 02:37:39 AM
PLease explain? What does DOS box do (other than simulate a DOS enviroment) do I start it up, then start up games from in there or what?

V

IIRC it was often enough to have a shortcut to DOSbox on the desktop, then drag/drop your DOS .exe into it.
Title: Re: DOS games under Vista?
Post by: DontSayBanana on April 06, 2010, 02:30:03 AM
I use DOSbox with DFend-R (DOSbox Frontend Reloaded).  The Frontend basically is the lazy way out; you point it to the folder of the DOS game, you point it to the setup file for the DOS game, and it sets up a profile for you (including emulating serial joysticks with USB joysticks and gamepads).  Then it's just a matter of treating it like another folder and just clicking the icon for the game.