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DOSBox crashes with Windows 3.1 in 256 colour modes

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First post, by mindbound

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I'm having a strange issue with all of my versions of DOSBox (0.74, SVN latest, DOSBox-X April 9, 2015) when running Windows 3.1 and trying to use any screen mode with 256 colours. Windows boots up seemingly normally but, when clicking on a menu item that opens a file selection window (e.g. File/Open) in any program, DOSBox crashes to a black unresponsive screen and can be only closed via Alt-F4 or through the task manager.

This issue occurs independently of the driver in question (I've tried S3, ET3000, and ET4000 from this page, with the appropriate machine values) and regardless of the program (I've tried Write, Mathematica 2.2, and several others). I haven't found any information on anything similar to this. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

Reply 1 of 6, by Osprey

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I haven't had that problem. I'm using DOSBox 0.74 and that same version of S3 drivers that you linked to. I have it set to 800x600 256 because I find that to be the smoothest experience, at least mouse-wise.

Have you tried updating to Windows 3.11? I don't mean Windows for Workgroups. There's a patch to update non-workgroup 3.1 to non-workgroup 3.11. I applied that to my build. Also, for what it's worth, I installed Win32s, WinG and Microsoft Mouse 9.00, though those probably have nothing to do with it.

If updating to 3.11 doesn't help, then perhaps one of your Windows system files is corrupt. You might try re-installing, if you haven't, already.

Reply 3 of 6, by Errius

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I can't help with your particular problem, however I usually disable the 256 driver unless a game specifically needs it as it causes stability problems with various other programs. I'm running unpatched Windows 3.1 with Win32s and WinG.

eta: Actually, I don't remember if I patched it to 3.11. Is the splash screen supposed to change?

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 4 of 6, by mindbound

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Errius wrote:

Is the splash screen supposed to change?

The splash screen does change to reflect the version number. As to the rest, today I managed to solve (?) the problem simply by doing a fresh reinstall of everything (DOSBox, Windows 3.11, drivers, etc.). I'm still not sure what caused in in the first place but at least now the screen modes can be switched without issues.

Reply 5 of 6, by Osprey

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Errius wrote:

eta: Actually, I don't remember if I patched it to 3.11. Is the splash screen supposed to change?

It's supposed to, but DOSBox doesn't support the last command in the patch's batch file, which updates the splash screen. That command fails, so the splash screen continues to say 3.1, but Windows is basically updated to 3.11. I had to run the patch batch file with 4DOS (which does support the necessary command) to get the splash screen updated.

Reply 6 of 6, by ripsaw8080

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Osprey wrote:

DOSBox doesn't support the last command in the patch's batch file

The official Win 3.1 to 3.11 update (WW0981) works without issue in SVN. The issue in 0.74 was spaces around the plus signs in a concatenation COPY.

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