MS-DOS-based games don't have the friendly installers found in the Windows 9x-based games. You should install MS-DOS-based games from a command prompt.
To open a command prompt
- Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the text box, and press ENTER.
A black box with white lettering opens, which resembles an MS-DOS screen. From there, you can install the game according to its instructions.
Set the sound in the DOS game to SoundBlaster defaults. That's your best bet for getting audio to work without a special program,
Next, create a shortcut to run the MS-DOS-based game, by following these steps:
1.Right-click the desktop, point to New, and then click Shortcut.
2.Type or browse to the location of the game's startup program, and then click Next.
3.Type a name for the shortcut, and then click Next.
4.Choose an icon for the shortcut, and then click Finish.
Now you have a shortcut to your MS-DOS-based game, which you can tweak to make the Windows XP environment more hospitable:
- Right-click the shortcut and click Properties.
You'll see a window with the following tabs:
- General: Basic information about the shortcut.
- Program: Location of the shortcut and a few other odds and ends.
- Font: You can choose the font properties for the command prompt window that the MS-DOS-based program runs in.
- Memory: Some MS-DOS-based programs require various types of extended or expanded memory. You can adjust those settings here. In most cases, you can leave the defaults alone, but if your program gives you an error indicating that it needs a certain amount of a certain type of memory, you can allocate that resource here.
- Screen: Specify whether you want the program run full-screen or windowed (the former is usually better), and whether to use fast ROM emulation (you usually do) and dynamic memory allocation (you usually also want).
- Misc: There are several options in this tab, including the option to allow the screen saver (I always disable this, because some MS-DOS-based programs don't gracefully deal with it), and which Windows shortcuts to allow (I disable them all).
- Compatibility: Same as the Program Compatibility Wizard options discussed above.
Summary: You can enter notes about the shortcut here.
You may need to experiment with several of the settings in the shortcut's Properties dialog box to get the MS-DOS-based game to run happily.
TIP: . Check for fan-created builds of old game code designed to run on newer operating system.
One of the trickiest parts of making MS-DOS-based games to run on Windows XP is getting the sound to work. Some sound cards come with feeble emulation of legacy drivers, but they rarely work to perfection. They usually use the default SoundBlaster resource allocations (stuff like IRQ and DMA settings). You might find your MS-DOS-based game's sound is skipping, cutting out, and having all sorts of problems.
MS recommends a tool called VDMSound. VDMsound is a software sound emulator.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/
After you install it, VDMSound integrates with Windows XP to make using it a cinch:
- Navigate to the MS-DOS game's Start program, right-click it, and then click Run with VDMS.
Then run your game with its audio resources set to the default SoundBlaster values.
Fix Older Games that Run Too Fast
Sometimes, you'll finally get a game to work only to have it run too fast to be playable. The sounds will be scrambled, animation will be ridiculously fast, and you'll simply be unable to keep up with the game. If that happens, you need a slowdown tool like the awesome Cpukiller.
http://www.cpukiller.com/
Cpukiller 3 is a shareware program that runs in the background and eats up CPU cycles. This limits CPU power and effectively slows it down. You can turn it on and off at your discretion, so it only needs to work when you're running those legacy games.
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