using xp sp2. win not load os or command prompt

DOSBox did not cause your system to fail. It does absolutely nothing to your hard drive, registry, device drivers or anything. The only thing it does is to use a lot of CPU cycles and displaying some graphics. The only thing it could have done is to cause overheating of your CPU, but no more than any other game. Go and check if a hardware failure, virus or a family member in your house has meddled with your machine.

Moe is correct. DOSBox is an extremely unobtrusive program and does not install itself nor change any system settings.

There are no hardware failures, dosbox did cuz the harddisk error though. by changing the .sys files used for the hdd driver files. this is what happened:
1 loaded dos box then mounted the drive c: not a directory in C:/ when i was done playing i closed the program by closing the xp window. i recieved an error message. when i when to boot up the drive wouldnt boot, since the hdd cotrollers were from dosbos used to emulate stuff like smartdrive.exe from 486 platfom. was this caused because i mounted the whole drive c:? Also there were two new partions. one being the 63mb talked about on the dosbox home page, and the other being totally blank even the % used is blank. Dos box caused new partions to be writted to my boot sector with out releasing them after i exited.... whats going on?

There are no hardware failures, dosbox did cuz the harddisk error though.

Obviously there was one otherwise your computer would be working properly.....How can you be sure that DosBox caused the error? Because it was the last thing that you ran before using your computer? That really doesn't mean anything. Booting up a computer is one of the most stressful activities for a computer.

The big question here is:

1. When was the last time you rebooted your computer before you had this problem.
2. When was the last time you diagnosed your hard drive? Scandisk/Chkdsk/Defrag?
3. Are you running a firewall?
4. Are you using Antivirus software?
5. Are you running Spyware software?
6. Are you using your desktop primarily with Administrator privleges?
7. When was the last time you went to Windows Update?
8. When was the last time you updated your drivers?

by changing the .sys files used for the hdd driver files. this is what happened:

What the heck does this mean? Changing the .sys files used for the hdd drivers? Is this something you did yourself? If so then undoubedly this is your problem....

1 loaded dos box then mounted the drive c: not a directory in C:/

This is correct. This is no different than opening the folder by opening Windows Explorer. DosBox does nothing different.

when i was done playing i closed the program by closing the xp window. i recieved an error message.

What error message?

when i when to boot up the drive wouldnt boot, since the hdd cotrollers were from dosbos used to emulate stuff

Again booting up your computer is a very stressfull activity.
DosBox does not have "HDD controllers" DosBox is just like any other program and relies on your operating system (Windows XP) to do everything with your computer. DosBox just lays on top of that like any other program.

like smartdrive.exe from 486 platfom.

huh? Smartdrv doesn't emulate anything. It caches frequently used information and has nothing to do with this situation whatsoever.

was this caused because i mounted the whole drive c:?

NO. Again the way that DosBox accesses your hard drive is no different that any other program in Windows XP.

Also there were two new partions. one being the 63mb talked about on the dosbox home page,

DosBox does not create partitions on your computer. IT CANNOT. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE and where is this "63mb talked about on the dosbox home page"? Are you referring to XMS memory? This has nothing to do with your hard drive or your host in any way. IT'S EMULATED.

and the other being totally blank even the % used is blank. Dos box caused new partions to be writted to my boot sector with out releasing them after i exited.... whats going on?

DOSBOX CANNOT MODIFY YOUR HARD DRIVE PARTITIONS. It looks like either:

1. A virus modified your hard drive.
2. Some type of disk corruption occured.
3. You played around with your system.
4. Some type of hard drive failure occured.

Well, I guess dood was smoking something forbidden before writing here...

Mirek

😉

Mr dos freak:

rebooted earier that night. a full hardware diagnostic revaels nothing wrong. mcaffe firewall and anti virus, adware and microsoft antispyware. always logged in as admin. windows and all programs fully updated. laptop in 2 months old. Well from reading what you wrote i can only assume that the krondor file i used had a boot sector virus. my computer still refuses to boot say hal.dll is missing or corrupt even though i re-copied it. im just going to use ide to usb and remove my docu~1 from the drive, repartion, reformat, reinstall. well thanks for all your insight. its goob to know that dos box does not change hdd partions.

hey mirekluza, its much better than what your puffin on

You can probably do a repair install off of the XP CD and that might fix it. Looks like some sort of HD corruption occured.

Have a look at your boot.ini.

what about rebuilding the boot.ini...

Isn't there a fixmbr command that would do that?

The master boot record and boot.ini are two separate things...

Does the windows cd have a boot.ini file in it that he can copy? or is it created when windows is installed. Also, is there a copy of the boot.ini in the c:\windows\repair folder?

There's a recpvery console command that repairs the boot.ini. Can't remember the name tho. Just type help.