How to run DOS games on DOSBox, can anyone help?

[Wulfgar]

Okay, i have DOSBox and 10 dozen DOS games and i can't run them, I don't know how to run them. Can anyone please help?

[Wulfgar]

I tryed to drag the DOS games to the DOSBox but that dosn't work either.

[monkeymadness]

Create a Folder and call it dosgames or whatever you would like.
Place the folder on the C drive, where you place it will be important. So I usually put it right on the C Drive.
Put all of your dosgames in that folder (I usually make folders for each seperate game to keep all of the files for one game together, which is also important because the game needs them to run).

You will want to note where the EXE file is located for each game. Example: dosgames (folder)>keen(folder)>keen1(folder)>keen1.exe

Run DOSBox.
You have to mount the folder with all the dosgames. You will need to follow the folder paths.

Example:
mount C C:\dosgames (If right on the C Drive)

C:

But if dosgames is inside Users/<Username>/Desktop then the mount would look like this:
mount C C:\Users\<Username>\Desktop\dosgames

C:

From here you need to find the EXE file for the game, so you need to change directory (cd) to get to it. From my example the EXE file was located in keen(folder)>keen1(folder)>keen1.exe
So I would type:

cd keen

cd keen1

keen1.exe

Your game should run at this point.

Other notes:
Alt-Enter will put you in and out of full screen.
Here is a summary of what DOSBox would look like following these steps:

Z:\>mount C C:\dosgames
Drive C is mounted as local directory C:\dosgames\

Z:\>C:

C:\> cd keen

C:\KEEN>cd keen1

C:\KEEN\KEEN1>keen1.exe

[monkeymadness]

PS Dragging the game should work as well, so you either don't have the right files for the game or you are dragging the wrong file into DOSBox. The above method should get things to work and if it doesn't then more than likely something is wrong with your games. Let me know and I can help you figure it out.

[Wulfgar]

It works! Thank you, I'm so glad to play DOS games again.

[LifesPlayer]

BTW for DOS executables/batch files (files that end in exe, com or bat) you don't need to include the end bit so you can just use "keen1" instead of "keen1.exe"

[Kogashuko]

Great to see the old games still Go . I have had no problems with DOSBOX yet and don't think i will. I still use a P3 with win98 as it's the Last OS with proper DOS. Multi boot or a spare pc either way works.

[Paarma]

Old topic I know, but you could consider getting a dosbox frontend like D-Fend Reloaded to handle all the game profiles. Pretty easy to use and you can use different settings for different games.

http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/