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MS-DOS Game Installation Wizard - Game Troubleshooting


Jason Carr

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That all sounds like a huge amount of overkill. Have you tried just dumping all of the floppies to a single directory and doing the install from there?

In general, most DOS games don't actually care whether or not you're on disc/disk [#] of [#] in order to install the corresponding data, it just cares whether or not the files it's looking for are in the directory it's using at the time.

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I posted the procedure i got to work with the floppy disk version of Mortal Kombat 2 on this thread. But that was 2 years ago. Maybe it still works? Lets us know. It's on the first page of this thread and now here:

"This reply box will not allow me to use backslashes. So all backslashes will be replaced with forward slashes "/".

Installing a MS-DOS game with multiple floppies Mortal Kombat 2.

In this guide E:/LaunchBox is the location of LaunchBox and E:/Setup is the location of the floppy disk images.

1. Run e:/LaunchBox/DOSBox/dosbox.exe

2. At the command prompt type: mount e e:/

type: e: (here is where you mount all of the floppy disk images. I put them into a batch file and saved it at the root of E)

type: run.bat (runs the command below) or

type: imgmount a e:/setup/mk2_1/MK2_1.IMA e:/setup/mk2_2/MK2_2.IMA e:/setup/mk2_3/MK2_3.IMA e:/setup/mk2_4/MK2_4.IMA e:/setup/mk2_5/MK2_5.IMA e:/setup/mk2_6/MK2_6.IMA e:/setup/mk2_7/MK2_7.IMA e:/setup/mk2_8/MK2_8.IMA -t floppy (the DOSBox status window will show this)

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Drive A: disk 2 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 3 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 4 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 5 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 6 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 7 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 8 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 1 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 2 of 8 now active

type: a:/install (Answer E as the drive and answer e:/emulat~1/launch~1/games/mk2 as the install path) When prompted for the next disk press Ctrl + F4, then enter. (repeat as needed). In the DOSBox status window you can see it switching to the next disk.

Drive A: disk 2 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 3 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 4 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 5 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 6 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 7 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 8 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

3. Open LaunchBox. From the menu bar click on Tools/Install Dos Game.

4. Type Mortal Kombat 2 and press Next.

5. Select Yes, my game is already installed into a folder.

6. Browse to E:/LaunchBox/Games/MK2/MK2.exe and press Next then Finish.

7.On the Edit Game screen press the search TheGameDB.net button to download all the meta data and box cover. "

Edited by EviLEd
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On 5/20/2017 at 1:51 PM, Zombeaver said:

That all sounds like a huge amount of overkill. Have you tried just dumping all of the floppies to a single directory and doing the install from there?

In general, most DOS games don't actually care whether or not you're on disc/disk [#] of [#] in order to install the corresponding data, it just cares whether or not the files it's looking for are in the directory it's using at the time.

Thanks for the suggestion. But at least for this game, every disk has the same "both" subfolder with the same "resourse.000" file. If I try pooling all the disks into one folder It will warn me about a file with the same name already exists. What I´m trying to do now is to look on the web for a installed version.

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On 5/20/2017 at 2:24 PM, EviLEd said:

I posted the procedure i got to work with the floppy disk version of Mortal Kombat 2 on this thread. But that was 2 years ago. Maybe it still works? Lets us know. It's on the first page of this thread and now here:

"This reply box will not allow me to use backslashes. So all backslashes will be replaced with forward slashes "/".

Installing a MS-DOS game with multiple floppies Mortal Kombat 2.

In this guide E:/LaunchBox is the location of LaunchBox and E:/Setup is the location of the floppy disk images.

1. Run e:/LaunchBox/DOSBox/dosbox.exe

2. At the command prompt type: mount e e:/

type: e: (here is where you mount all of the floppy disk images. I put them into a batch file and saved it at the root of E)

type: run.bat (runs the command below) or

type: imgmount a e:/setup/mk2_1/MK2_1.IMA e:/setup/mk2_2/MK2_2.IMA e:/setup/mk2_3/MK2_3.IMA e:/setup/mk2_4/MK2_4.IMA e:/setup/mk2_5/MK2_5.IMA e:/setup/mk2_6/MK2_6.IMA e:/setup/mk2_7/MK2_7.IMA e:/setup/mk2_8/MK2_8.IMA -t floppy (the DOSBox status window will show this)

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Mounted FAT volume is FAT12 with 2847 clusters

Drive A: disk 2 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 3 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 4 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 5 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 6 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 7 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 8 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 1 of 8 now active

Drive A: disk 2 of 8 now active

type: a:/install (Answer E as the drive and answer e:/emulat~1/launch~1/games/mk2 as the install path) When prompted for the next disk press Ctrl + F4, then enter. (repeat as needed). In the DOSBox status window you can see it switching to the next disk.

Drive A: disk 2 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 3 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 4 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 5 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 6 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 7 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

Drive A: disk 8 of 8 now active Diskcaching reset for normal mounted drives.

3. Open LaunchBox. From the menu bar click on Tools/Install Dos Game.

4. Type Mortal Kombat 2 and press Next.

5. Select Yes, my game is already installed into a folder.

6. Browse to E:/LaunchBox/Games/MK2/MK2.exe and press Next then Finish.

7.On the Edit Game screen press the search TheGameDB.net button to download all the meta data and box cover. "

Thank you for your reply. This is exactly what I did, but for some reason the main DosBox window doesn't recognise when the next floppy image is mounted. As I said on the last reply, I'll be better finding the whole game already installed.

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  • 5 months later...

Hi, I'm trying to install the game "The 11th Hour" through the Launchbox Dos Game Install Wizard but the wizard looks for files called "Install" or "Setup" and if it can't find them it shuts down dosbox. The install file for this game is GO.Bat. Is there any way I can get around this? Idealy it would be nice to be able to manually find it if one isn't found (ie returned to the dos prompt instead of exiting) or specify the install file to look for. Thanks

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I got around it by saving a new ISO with the Go.bat renamed install.bat. Replaced with the original ISO afterwards though just incase there are issues. You could probably do this with all games that have a unique install file name as it's a pretty quick and easy workaround and the install wizard makes easy work of it rather than having to manually installing them.

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  • 2 months later...

I'm having a problem with blade runner.

Now, obviously blade runner is a tricky game to run on some computers,  but this takes the cake. I've been able to determine that blade runner will either work with a german launch and installation executable available from some site (tried it and worked) or you can run (don't know how stable though) it through the newest ScummVM interpreter (mine currently is 2.1.0 git or something like that)

 

The problem occurs when i try to use both of those solutions in launchbox.

-First of all, i'm able to run the game in scummvm, pointing at the folder and telling it to add a game, blade runner is recognized and when i click the link in scummvm itself, the game will start up (at least, haven't tested the rest of the game in ScummVM yet). If i do the same, but using the 'game - add' function in launchbox, it won't work. data files not found.....

-Another error occurs when i try to just run the game from the launcher (after installing it with the german installwizard which also adds some fixes, an update and other things...) it works, but i want it working in launchbox. Tested this theory quite often:

-when i install the game i can run it by clicking blade.exe. no problems. restarting the computer and trying it again works as well, but once i try launching it through launchbox i get a 'blade.exe crashed' notification by windows. strangely enough, when i try the normal executable again after restarting the computer, the game won't start anymore, not in launchbox, nor normally through the executable. at least not untill i reinstall blade runner using the german installwizard. 

this is the link to the installer:

https://www.replaying.de/files/blade-runner-patch-windows-vista-7-8-x64/

also, my exact version of ScummVM: 2.1.0git4-g2ca0235

Any thoughts?

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2 hours ago, flexzi said:

-First of all, i'm able to run the game in scummvm, pointing at the folder and telling it to add a game, blade runner is recognized and when i click the link in scummvm itself, the game will start up (at least, haven't tested the rest of the game in ScummVM yet). If i do the same, but using the 'game - add' function in launchbox, it won't work. data files not found.....

I've not tried Blade Runner in ScummVM as I just run it natively, but the process should be the same as I mentioned in the other post earlier. Make a shortcut to ScummVM, edit the target path with the relevant switches and folder path and the game's shortname, then import that like you would any Windows shortcut (drag it into the LB UI and select the third option - "none of the above" - in the Wizard).

2 hours ago, flexzi said:

-Another error occurs when i try to just run the game from the launcher (after installing it with the german installwizard which also adds some fixes, an update and other things...) it works, but i want it working in launchbox. Tested this theory quite often:

-when i install the game i can run it by clicking blade.exe. no problems. restarting the computer and trying it again works as well, but once i try launching it through launchbox i get a 'blade.exe crashed' notification by windows. strangely enough, when i try the normal executable again after restarting the computer, the game won't start anymore, not in launchbox, nor normally through the executable. at least not untill i reinstall blade runner using the german installwizard.

I don't know what to tell you there, it's working fine through Launchbox here. Simply starting an .exe shouldn't function any differently between LB and outside LB. Basically all LB is is a visually-appealing, easily organizable collection of Windows shortcuts, that you can add custom command-line injections to if you so choose (which you can again do purely through a Windows shortcut, via editing the target path). It lets you have some nice media and metadata to go with them, but basically they're just shortcuts - if something works just by starting it in Windows, it should work in Launcbox.

I did use an external installer for Blade Runner, but I don't think it was that one.

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  • 1 month later...

Just to update the topic to anyone having this problem (is this how using a forum works? I'm not that savy with online things)

Turns out the HDFRAMES.DAT file required to run some aspects of bladerunner in better quality resolutions is not that happy about me not loading a disc. Though it's not the ideal solution to the problem, simply keeping the 1st disc loaded in DAEMON TOOLS LITE fixed the problem. It was supposed to load without any CD's though, but at least the game is working in both windows AND launchbox. someday i'll try and fix it, i guess...

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1 minute ago, flexzi said:

Just to update the topic to anyone having this problem (is this how using a forum works? I'm not that savy with online things)

Turns out the HDFRAMES.DAT file required to run some aspects of bladerunner in better quality resolutions is not that happy about me not loading a disc. Though it's not the ideal solution to the problem, simply keeping the 1st disc loaded in DAEMON TOOLS LITE fixed the problem. It was supposed to load without any CD's though, but at least the game is working in both windows AND launchbox. someday i'll try and fix it, i guess...

Crap, I meant to post about it in here as well but forgot. But yes, you have to have a disc drive visible in order for it to work. You actually don't have to have a disc mounted, it just needs to be able to see a drive. I use DaemonTools myself, but you could also use something like VirtualCloneDrive (or other options). If you're on Windows 10 and you don't have any dedicated virtual drive software, you can use the built-in mounting functionality; the drive disappears once it's unmounted, but you can mount a disc image - literally any disc image, it doesn't have to be from Blade Runner - and it will work. If you have virtual drive software like DT or VCD the drive can be visible at all times, even unmounted, and that will work as well.

I have some notes about this in the Zomb's Lair thread, on the archive page, and on my website. I forgot about it in here though :/

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On 1/19/2018 at 7:26 PM, Zombeaver said:

I've not tried Blade Runner in ScummVM as I just run it natively, but the process should be the same as I mentioned in the other post earlier. Make a shortcut to ScummVM, edit the target path with the relevant switches and folder path and the game's shortname, then import that like you would any Windows shortcut (drag it into the LB UI and select the third option - "none of the above" - in the Wizard).

On 1/19/2018 at 6:00 PM, flexzi said:

It's actually been awhile since i've started updating my launchbox again, but i remembered this quote. I have kind of the same problem with the game 'amazon: guardians of Eden'. When i start it in ScummVM (2.0.0) it will start normally. But whenever i try to import the game through launchbox like any other scummVM game before, i get an error stating that 'game data not found'. It will then redirect me to scummVM and once starting it there, it will simply work. Is there any fix for this? There's some other weird stuff happening to me while importing scummvm games as well, but i never thought much of it since the games imported would work.

any time i import a game for scummVM i use the method like in screen 1. That's all good and dandy but when the path and gamefield are filled out, i go to search for the game in the database. when i click the game i'm trying to install, for some reason it will uncheck all the scumm boxes i ticked earlier and will have changed the tab and checked emulation like in screen 2. I've tried selecting scummvm there once to see if it worked, but it didn't. so i uncheck emulation and check all the boxes to scummvm again. once i'm finished and press ok i ALWAYS get the message in screen 3. I press no since the scummvm tab is working fine and all the games i import work, with the exception (second time now) for BladeRunner and apparently, now, Amazon: Guardians of Eden.

I've tried your shortcut solution but it doesn't work either. paths and everything are entered correctly as far as i can tell but i get the same error. once i open up scummVM and run the game from there, there's no trouble at all. Any Thoughts?

Screen 1.JPG

Screen 2.JPG

Screen 3.JPG

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15 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

You should probably uncheck "use an emulator" box. Instructions for importing scummvm games are here: 

I don't know about you, but i'm not allowed to have the tab 'emulation' checked if i want to use the ScummVM tab. So there's no way i have them both checked. I also checked your way to insert games and that's exactly how i do it, i just start out differently. I check scummVM in the scummVM tab, find the path the game is in, select it, select the game from the dropdown list of scumm games, and THEN scrape the name. once i click the name in the database, it automatically reverts to the emulation tab and checks the box there, so i undo that, check the scummvm box in the appropriate tab and the path and game are (luckily) still filled in.

the ONLY thing i can think of is that amazon: guardians of eden is stated to be 'not tested' on the scumm website. but then it would still be weird that running it from the emulator directly starts the game no problem, but when i add it the way you do, it says 'no game data found'. the path is definitely the correct one, i checked in both scummVM and launchbox that i selected the same exact folder for the datafiles to be found.,,,

so thx for the help, but it doesn't solve my problem yet.

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Also (maybe i wasnt clear on this) i have imported many a game for scummvm already, and all of em work great (using the method i described above). it's just this single title (amazon: Guardians of Eden) that doesn't seem to work, along with blade runner, but i have that running through windows now and it works just fine.

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It would appear that LB is incorrectly calling this "Access" in ScummVM which is likely the problem - that gets added to the list when you try to start it using LB. Using the shortcut method is working just fine though.

Create a shortcut with:

Target: [path\to\scummvm\scummvm.exe] -f -p "[path\to\game]" -[game shortname]

Start in: [path\to\scummvm]

So in my case this is:

Target: X:\Emulation\LaunchBox\ScummVM\scummvm.exe -f -p "X:\Emulation\ScummVM\Roms\Amazon - Guardians of Eden" amazon

Start in: X:\Emulation\LaunchBox\ScummVMimage.png.be3b901d8f810149564a460dc393e66b.png

image.thumb.png.9b1df9a985ef52c713b78c6522de0590.pngimage.thumb.png.705da4d1b7850f1cca6b46207fafd272.pngimage.thumb.png.15716d73217aa23ed661e1c0e85f57a9.png

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Thank you so much! I was already scratching the back of my head because of the shortname 'access'. didn't try out 'amazon' though, which (now) sounds much more likely to be the shortname! and to be honest, i thought i had to rename the target path IN the shortcut, not as a launcher option in Launchbox itself, so i can see where i went wrong with this.

haven't tried this out yet, but i'll be sure to give it a run when i have time tomorrow. this will probably save me some time on future errors as well, so thankx again!

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