Probably you have the installations packed. After decompressing them (to a temporary directory) you must follow the installation procedure. 😎

Hmmm. I have decompressed the files to a directory, I decompressed SQ4.rar into the folder c:\games\oldgames\sq4

When I try to follow the installation procedure, I come to a point where it asks me to type the letter of the hard drive I want to install the game to. I type C. Then it asks if I want to do a small or complete installation, and I choose complete. Then an error occurs, "can't open input file in copy." I click enter and it goes to try to find the next file, same message. After scrolling through about 20-30 of these error messages, I then get to a new message that says "Please insert the disc labeled "disc 1" into drive C" None of the files I un-rar'd are titled disc 1, and so I'm just not sure what to do.

Here's a link to a jpeg of what my sq4 folder looks like. Thanks for the help
http://s39.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=16BNBERZDA … A00MIXXKVZ54O0N

@Guest - read this post. It should give you an idea of how you need to treat your unpacked files/directory as if it was an CD you were installing from:

Re: dos box 0.63

If the above doesn't work, post back and I'll post a listing of my SQ4 directoy.

OK, I'm getting closer. Thanks for posting the link to the tutorial on mounting the drives. I had been mounting the C drive, but I wasn't aware that I needed to mount D as a cdrom. I followed the instructions, and here is what I typed:

mount c "c:\games\oldgames\postinstall\sq4"
mount d "c:\games\oldgames\preinstall\sq4" -t cdrom
d:
install

The sierra install begins, and I click through the sound card selection, etc. When it comes time to install the files, however, I get the message "error creating configuration file" and the installation stops. It seems to me that I'm getting closer, but what is going wrong?

Hmm - did you clean out the postinstall\sq4 directory before starting the install?

Using Windows Explorer, check if any read-only files exists in preinstall\sq4. If so, make then read-write. It could be that the installer copies the read-only attribute from the preinstall to the postinstall directory.

Yeah, I did clean out the postinstall\sq4 folder, and also I made sure all of the files in preinstall\sq4 are read-write.

Here is a twist:
When I DON'T type -t cdrom at the end of the
"mount d c:\games\oldgames\preinstall\sq4"
then the install gets farther, and doesn't give me the "error creating configuration file" message. When I don't do the -t cdrom, it asks me what drive I want to install the game to, and I say "C," and then it asks if I want to do a small or complete install, and I do complete. It then goes on to INSTALL a number of files, but then a message comes up asking for me to insert disc 2.

I don't know if this means anything, but it looks like I'm getting a partial install when I don't mount D: as a cdrom, and I get no install when I do (I just get that configuration file error message). I appreciate the help I'm getting on this forum. Any more suggestions?

If these rars are the files of the original Sierra install floppies, some of the larger game files were split over more than one disk and need to be concatenated or joined during the install. I have archived all of my old floppy games on to CD for safe keeping. When I want to install one of these with DOSBox, I just mount a folder as an A: drive as a floppy and copy the archived files from each disk as needed by the install. This works with most of the Sierra floppy games.

As far as the configuration file problem goes, be sure that you let the game install to the default location, C:\SIERRA\SQ4, (C: can be just your mounted C: in DOSBox)

OK, I feel like such a noob. I realized one mistake, I assumed SQ4.1.rar, SQ4.2.rar, SQ4.3.rar...SQ4.6.rar were all linked together, and that when I extracted the contents of SQ4.1.rar to my hard drive I would get ALL of the files. That's not the case though; each of those must be a disc.

Now, I HAVE gotten the game to install properly after un-raring all the proper files, HOWEVER, I could not get it to install properly when I used the -t cdrom command. It installed properly when I left that command off though. Why is this? And is it a problem that I didn't get it to install with the -t cdrom, or is that not a big deal? Either way, I'm playing Space Quest 4 now, but I'd like to understand why the -t cdrom thing isn't working, why I'm getting an error with the configuration file, so I'll know what's going if I have similar problems with other games in the future.

So mr. self-appointed noob - those SQ4.x.rar files, what do you think they were made from? CD-ROM's or floppies?

eureka! - thanks for the help and patience