Can't Start My Games

[John Roxton]

Hey all, new to LaunchBox here, looking forward to playing all my old PC games. I have the CD's and all, and the installations seem to be going okay, but when I try to play the games (the CD is in the drive), Dosbox initially pops up and then... nothing. What gives? How do I go about troubleshooting this?

Running Windows 10, on a fairly powerful PC, nothing super extreme.

The game I have been trying is Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, also tried Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

 

Thanks in advance. Totally lost noob here.

[JamesBond@ge]

Why would Dosbox pop up if you are installing these from their original 1990's CD's? Have you set Dosbox to run these somehow?

Edited December 8, 2017 by JamesBond@ge

[cleverest]

I have issues with some games in the TOTAL DOS collection  too (I'm using release 13); what fixes many of them is running the setup for them again (although it doesn't fix them all),.

To do this: right-click the game, and choose near the top of that menu to CONFIG the game...if that option is missing, it needs to be pointed to the right EXE....so right click the game, and EDIT it...go to the launcher area that shows the EXE that is loaded when you double click it, and look for the field below it for the INSTALLER, browse and choose the INSTALL/setup.EXE (can be named anything, but usually something like that), then click to OK that....right-click and choose CONFIG...then when the DOSBOX opens the installer, go through the setup, always picking the default C drive to install (it actually treats this so called C drive as the folder in your actual folder you have the game stored, so don't change that, just pick the C drive it gives you in most cases, if it gives you a choice of C, D, E,...always pick C...when asked for soundcard/music card, just choose soundblaster or soundblaster 16, complete the install/setup) and then make sure under EDIT again that the game matches the correct .EXE under where it is launching, sometimes LB auto sets the wrong .exe file....

[John Roxton]

On 12/7/2017 at 9:50 PM, JamesBond@ge said:

Why would Dosbox pop up if you are installing these from their original 1990's CD's? Have you set Dosbox to run these somehow?

You made a good point, so I completely uninstalled the games, reinstalled them, and imported them into Launchbox as Windows games, and now I'm getting the same result trying to play these as I did trying to play them outside of Launchbox  I was hoping Launchbox would emulate the older systems somehow, but I'm getting the same error I was getting before.

 

Regarding this other suggestion,

On 12/8/2017 at 8:57 AM, cleverest said:

I have issues with some games in the TOTAL DOS collection  too (I'm using release 13); what fixes many of them is running the setup for them again (although it doesn't fix them all),.

To do this: right-click the game, and choose near the top of that menu to CONFIG the game...if that option is missing, it needs to be pointed to the right EXE....so right click the game, and EDIT it...go to the launcher area that shows the EXE that is loaded when you double click it, and look for the field below it for the INSTALLER, browse and choose the INSTALL/setup.EXE (can be named anything, but usually something like that), then click to OK that....right-click and choose CONFIG...then when the DOSBOX opens the installer, go through the setup, always picking the default C drive to install (it actually treats this so called C drive as the folder in your actual folder you have the game stored, so don't change that, just pick the C drive it gives you in most cases, if it gives you a choice of C, D, E,...always pick C...when asked for soundcard/music card, just choose soundblaster or soundblaster 16, complete the install/setup) and then make sure under EDIT again that the game matches the correct .EXE under where it is launching, sometimes LB auto sets the wrong .exe file....

I looked for the config button, but it was grayed out, presumably because my games are not DOS games, they're 90's Windows games. I felt dumb when I realized that, for what it's worth.

So to reiterate, I'm a real noob at LaunchBox. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way I could be using the application to solve my problems? Or should I be looking for a solution somewhere else because Launchbox won't do what I want it to? (I came to Launchbox in the first place because I have yet to successfully run any of my old PC games on my brand new Windows 10 machine).

 

Thanks again for the help. Was feeling quite alone out here.

[neil9000]

If these are just windows games then all you need to do is import the .exe or the shortcut for the game, preferably into a platform called windows. I suggest dragging a .exe or shortcut onto launchbox and when the wizard pops up select the "none of the above" option this will import the game without associating a emulator with it, so it will just launch the game. You may run into issues running games that old on Windows 10, some of them may just simply not work on that OS. Google is always your friend in that regard to see if a game even works on Windows 10 in the first place. 

[jayjay]

I have GOG version of sands of time and it just works. Roller coaster tycoon 2 needs compatibility changed to xp sp3 and it needs directplay installed. Try changing sands of time as well.

Edited December 10, 2017 by jayjay