Tenderfoot Thahd jerrynsteph4eva Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 Hello! My name is Jerry and I'm new to the spiderweb forums and was hoping you could help me with a problem I'm having. So thanks to the recent Humble Bundle, I've been playing the Avernum games and they're quite amazing. However, I grew up playing the shareware versions of Exile 1, 2 and 3 (I always wanted to register but I didn't have the money back then) and came to the site looking to purchase the games. Amazingly, they were free so I downloaded them only to find out that my 64 bit win 7 won't run them. So long story short, I got Windows 3.1 installed on Dosbox and the games work smoothly (aside from some flickering). However, as I go to load my save file, it immediately shuts down to a black screen that I can't get out of (unless I stop Dosbox and reload it). I thought it was just because I was playing Exile 1, but it also happens on the other versions of Exile. Is there a way to fix this or should I start looking for my Windows 95 cd so I can create a virtual drive? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Harehunter Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 I have found a better virtual machine that works very nicely on win 7 https://www.virtualbox.org/ This is freeware. You can load any type of OS you may have a license to. Currently on my WIn7 32-bit, I have one VM with Ubuntu Linux and another with Win XP. Win 98 will install in here perfectly fine too. Enjoy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fledgling Fyora TJen Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 Ty changing the output setting in the dosbox config file. For myself I found that the surface and overlay outputs had a tendency to cause problems, while the openlnb output seemed to work best for me. The problem with using virtualbox is that you can't scale up the screen resolution. With dosbox you can set the scaler setting to "normal2x forced" letting you play the game in 1280x960 resolution, which makes a rather big difference on large monitors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenderfoot Thahd jerrynsteph4eva Posted July 26, 2013 Author Share Posted July 26, 2013 Thank you both for your helpful suggestions! I actually got the games to work but I had to install windows 95. The good news is that the games are running perfectly and both saving and loading. But I appreciate the help and quick responses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Harehunter Posted July 27, 2013 Share Posted July 27, 2013 You are still in DOSBOX with Win 95? Awesome! I had read that it could be done, but had not tried it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fledgling Fyora TJen Posted July 27, 2013 Share Posted July 27, 2013 Heh, it's even possible to install Windows 98SE in dosbox. That's what I'm using. Harehunter 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast The Mystic Posted August 4, 2013 Share Posted August 4, 2013 I've seen tutorials for installing Windows 3.1 and 95 in DOSBox, but I never knew it could be done for Win98/98SE. Cool! You are still in DOSBOX with Win 95? Awesome! I had read that it could be done, but had not tried it.I've heard that until the NTFS kernel was developed, Windows at its core was basically a shell over DOS. Therefore, installing an old version of Windows in DOSBox shouldn't be surprising. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Harehunter Posted August 4, 2013 Share Posted August 4, 2013 Hello Mystic, My surprise was not so much that he had Win98SE running in DOSBox, it is that he had it running well. Getting the tunables set properly is the key. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast The Mystic Posted August 4, 2013 Share Posted August 4, 2013 Yeah, setting up the tunables is the hard part. Installing the OS is relatively easy. I've tried installing Win95/98 in both DOSBox and VirtualBox, but could never get the display settings right, nor could I find a good driver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Harehunter Posted August 5, 2013 Share Posted August 5, 2013 I have Win XP on a VirtualBox at home. Went on even smoother than in real life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast The Mystic Posted August 7, 2013 Share Posted August 7, 2013 I also run WinXP in VirtualBox, and it works great in that environment. I use it to play the Exile trilogy, BoX, and most of the Avernum and Geneforge series. Too bad Microsoft plans to stop supporting WinXP shortly, if they haven't already; it was one of their better OSes. The fastest OS I've ever used in VirtualBox was Win98. After the initial install, it booted in about 7 seconds flat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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