Forums > Off Topic > Windows 3.x under DOSBox (under WinXP)
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 11/29/2006 1:22 AM · Permalink · Report
In the interest of the pursuit of further authenticity into my old game inquiry, I've determined that old Windows games will probably look, feel and behave more the way they were intended in an old Windows environment than in a new one. I've got my install disks together (Win for Workgroups 3.11) and managed to get the sucker to install, but it won't run, getting just past the splash screen before crashing out with the error message <tt>ERROR: Unsupported expanded-memory driver already installed. Remove the driver from CONFIG.SYS</tt> -- this even after I've REMarked out every line from the dosbox config.sys
My suspicion is that I need to get into DOSBox's settings and tweak them to better accommodate Windows. Any suggestions?
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 11/29/2006 9:17 AM · Permalink · Report
Actually, last I heard, Windows 3.x was not supported due to incomplete emulation... but it was -getting there-.
It may not be 100%, but, uh... this is not the first place I checked. a thread elsewhere suggested that it could at least up and run, if nor necessarily run all programs reliably. I would have inquired there further, but the denizens looked more than a little ornery and my suspicion is that there may be some here also who have already addressed this conundrum 8)
What I do is fire up an old copy of Virtual PC, run a Windows 95 system, and play there.
A step outside my experience, but maybe an avenue I ought to investigate.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 12/1/2006 8:05 PM · Permalink · Report
I've gotten it to work myself, but I didn't encounter that error so I don't know a solution offhand...
It's frustrating, as I've had proof that it can get 99% of the way there... while finalising the installation it got far enough into Windows to pop up all the folders and populate them with the application icons... then DOSBox crashed out. I hope that didn't happen when the installation wasn't yet complete, because there's not much I can do about that.
ungibbed (8) on 12/8/2006 8:15 PM · Permalink · Report
Even under Virtual PC for Windows, Windows 3.1 becomes nightmarishly unstable after you install the supporting drivers for the emulated hardware (SB 16 and S3 graphics). Running old games on Win95 seems to work a bit better but as said, it's not a "perfect" environment.