hmm remove the offending file ?

and or look what's in it ?

Gibberish in notepad (as in, a line of ranom spaces or ASCII characters)...dies entirely when it's delete (i guess the game only generates it on install, not on load)

did you install the game using dosbox or using your native OS ?

(try to do the other one around. )

Second is there a config utility present (like setup or setsound)
if so try configuring the game to run in no sound mode.

It works for me....
but I didn't install it with the original installer, I got it from an abandonware CD and it seems to have a correct config.dat.
Probably just dosbox can't install it right.

Here it is my config.dat 😉

thanks a ton!

what are the installation properties for this config, btw (which sound, what kind of graphics decompression, if you have any idea)?

Originally posted by iampiti Probably just dosbox can't install it right.

Kind of doubt that. IIRC, it did the same thing on my 486-66. I would think the odds are that a corrupt archive of the game has been free-floating around and that everyone is trying to use that archive. I'm certain it's on one of my collection CD's (you know, those "10 Great games on one CD" kind of collections...usually had an annoying autorun menu that won't work on anything faster than a 486), but it's buried somewhere...if I ever find it, I will try to confirm this...

There's two versions floating around. The installation files for that one, and one missing all the surgery stuff. Both are equally useless. That game is NO fun w/o the surgery. Think you could U/L it if you ever find it?

Originally posted by griphus Think you could U/L it if you ever find it?

Uh, not here in any case. We're here for discussion, not for warez exchanging.

That game is NO fun w/o the surgery.

There's a scary phrase. If I find my game, I'll attempt to come up with a fix.

I had the same problems using DOSBox, but I've had some success using VDMsound.
The install files must be in a root directory (you could put them on a CD). Run the install program using VDMsound, same for the program.
It will run (appears to freeze at first, just be patient), but you need to turn off the digital sound. Surgery is difficult with no sound.

Therein lies the problem.
What Life & Death 2 uses is RealSOUND, a funky technology developed by Access Software, that allows for playing of digital samples on the computer's beeper. It tries to send stuff directly to the beeper...and NTVDM chokes on it. Hell, Win9x choked on it, too. You had to run in true DOS mode to get it to work.

It works for me using VDMSound under WinXP. No sound effects, though. Must be the REALSOUND issue Snover was talking earlier. I'm going to check DOSBox latest CVS and will report back.

UPDATE: I get the same corrupted CONFIG.DAT error message using latest DOSBox CVS. Seems like the only way to play it so far is by using VDMSound.

I deleted my previous posts in this thread, because I felt they were just cluttering it up and not really contributing. Instead I've compactly summarized all my findings as follows:

• The Life & Death 2 installation ZIP on Home of the Underdogs (the easiest place to find them) is not corrupt. It will work fine on the kinds of systems it was designed for. The problem is most systems aren't the kind it was designed for. ;)
• I can't get LD2 working with DosBox or VDMSound; I get the infamous "config file error". I haven't bothered using a boot disk and going into pure DOS just yet (who wants to use a boot disk just to play a game?), but somehow I doubt it would work.
• I can get it working under Bochs, with MS-DOS 6.22 as the guest OS.
• Mouse support works; must use a normal DOS mouse driver.
• I can't figure out how to get sound in Bochs (at least on WinXP as the host OS), neither SB16 nor PC speaker.
• I noticed that one time my hall of fame got corrupted. Possibly or my powering-off the game at inappropriate times while I was figuring out how to fix the crashing problem. Reinstalling fixes this.
• The game is not fully playable in Bochs: when you try to drill a hole in the patient's skull, which is necessary for every operation in the game, Bochs will give a SIGILL error panic and get stuck in an infinite loop.
• EDIT: A SIGILL error does NOT cause an infinite loop in the latest stable release of Bochs. I was using a newer, unstable version; it will still panic in 2.0.4 but you can ignore the panic if you select "alwayscont" (always continue when panic occurs) and the game will still appear to function properly. I don't know if this causes any invisible ill effects or not; I wouldn't try it with a hard disk image you care about. Luckily, Bochs makes it easy to make a simple disk image with only MS-DOS, a mouse driver, and the game. NOTE: if this first happens when you're using a drill (using it causes a panic), the drill will still be going when you go back to the Bochs main window. Get back to it quick, press F12 to enable the mouse (if you disabled it when it froze), and click it to let go in time! Alternate workarounds: set "panic: action=ignore" in the config file in the appropriate place, or always disable them before each time you run the simulation.

- Kef

Another update. After reading most posts here, i am presuming this one has a nasty installation program. It also failed for me. What i did is to copy all contents to a folder and SUBST it as drive B: - then install it as if it were on floppy B: choosing the option of decompress video data (bitmaps?) to hard disk. This results in a 4.6MB+ installation but i was able to pack it to a 1.2MB RAR file afterwards, thus fitting it on a single 1.44MB floppy. Bad news is that i configured it for SB and it seems there is no way to reconfigure it later. I also checked LD2.EXE inside and i just saw some video modes selection parameters: CGA (ugh), EGA and VGA. It seemed there weren't any sound parameters.

I'd actually stumbled upon the SUBST trick when I installed this game a couple years ago on my old comp (without any emulation). It does work correctly. Anyway, to reconfigure the settings, all you have to do is just run the installer again. There are sound configuration settings: it will ask you to choose between PC Speaker, AdLib, and SoundBlaster. Also the game doesn't support CGA, but it supports TGA (Tandy). It's not installing the game that's problematic, though, it's actually running it that's troublesome: most people, myself included, always get a CONFIG FILE ERROR (though I don't get it in Bochs).

- Kef

Arrrgh. Found another lockup bug/unimplemented feature in Bochs, this time in EGA mode: I was trying to drill a burr hole in the patient's skull in a subdural hematoma operation as you normally would, and the game froze and Bochs again gives the SIGILL error.

Apparently, there's no way to get the game to work correctly in Bochs, unless these are just bugs with the latest beta release. I guess I'll have to try to get it to cooperate with VDMSound somehow. How did you guys get it to work?

- Kef

Found something that is actually relevant to DosBox! ~gasp~
I did a search for this: vdmsound "life and death 2"

on a search engine, and I stumbled upon a Spanish-language page about DosBox. It was basically a tutorial, but at the bottom it has a list of games and their working status. Life and Death 2 happened to be on this list: Life and Death 2: Funciona pero el sonido está mal

If you're rusty on your Spanish, it means this: Life and Death 2: It works, but the sound is bad.

This is apparently with DosBox 0.58...maybe it CAN work with DosBox??

- Kef

P.S. Oh, you want the link? Here: http://www.alianza.meristation.com/trivial/dosbox.htm

wel try it 😀
0.58 can still be downloaded.
Dosbox has changed a lot between 0.60 and 0.58.
Some new bugs were introduced. Some we don't understand yet.
(like Alone in the Dark)

You can find 0.58 at the downloads page by other versions of dosbox.

I did, actually, but it didn't work for me (at least not yet). Damn this game is stubborn. 😀

- Kef

The version that is working is available at Lost Treasures.
(is this the one without the surgery?)
Btw., Sound is problematic.

Version with installation works in pure DOS, but not in dosbox.