How are you trying to run it? We need to know exactly what you're doing before we can do more than guess what you might be doing wrong.

If you are installing from floppies or CD-ROM, you should open DOSBox first and mount both your virtual C: drive and the drive containing the install files. Then, install the game from within DOSBox.

If the game is stored in a ZIP/RAR/etc. archive, unzip it into a subdirectory of whatever directory you usually mount as your virtual C: drive in DOSBox. Then, configure and run the game from within DOSBox.

1. Create a directory for your game, e.g. "C:\DOSBox stuff\MyGame".
2. Insert CD in drive.
3. Start DOSBox.
4. In DOSBox, mount up DOSBox's drive C: and D:
   
   Z:>mount C "C:\DOSBox stuff\MyGame"
   Z:>mount D "D:\" -t cdrom -ioctl
   
   (assuming that D:\ is your real CD/DVD drive)
5. Install the game from D: to C:
   
   Z:>D:
   D:>install
   
   (or "setup", or whatever the command to start the installation is called. Check your Manual/Installation Guide for MyGame for the exact command to use)
6. Configure sound, configure graphics, ...
   
   (when you configure sound and are asked about stuff like IO/IRQ/DMA/High DMA addresses, please verify that you use the same values as listed in "%ProgramFiles%\DOSBox-0.63\dosbox.conf")
7. Start game.
   
   D:>C:
   C:>dir
   C:>mygame
   
   (or "run", or "play" or whatever the command to start the game is called. Check your Manual/Installation Guide for MyGame for the exact command to use)

i tried mounting both the C and D drive, and installing the game. but when i installed, it made a new directory in the C:\DOSBox\MyGame, but there's nothing in the folder. i've also tried running the game from the CD only, and when i try that that's when DOSBox just shuts down.

Nova - did the install in step 5 complete without errors? What do the installation guide for "Sword of the Samurai " say about how to install it?