Sorry, I've re-read it, and I'm still reading it the way I did before - you seem to be claiming that VIDE and MSCDEX are things I don't need.

gladders wrote:

Sorry, I've re-read it, and I'm still reading it the way I did before - you seem to be claiming that VIDE and MSCDEX are things I don't need.

You don't need them for Windows unless you like seeing that your drives are running in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode.

AlaricD wrote:

Obviously, you'll need to configure things so when you boot to Windows it executes the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT entries that load things you need (IFSHLP.SYS and such) but NOT the things you DON'T need (VIDE-CDD.SYS and MSCDEX.EXE).

I'm not sure how it can get more clear. Make it so that when you choose to boot to Windows it loads HIMEM.SYS, EMM386.EXE, IFSHLP.SYS but NOT VIDE-CDD.SYS/MSCDEX.EXE. This is for when you want to boot into Windows. Windows should not need VIDE-CDD.SYS/MSCDEX.EXE.

When you choose to boot to DOS, *THEN* make sure it executes VIDE-CDD.SYS/MSCDEX.EXE, because it's obvious you will need to load it to get CD-ROM support so that you may play Star Trek 25th Anniversary CD.

Ok, how would I do that?

I don't have a Win9x system right now, but I recall you must edit the MSDOS.SYS in the root of C: to ensure the lines:

1BootGUI=0
2BootKeys=1
3BootMenuDefault=1

are present, then have your CONFIG.SYS set up with a menu. Note that MSDOS.SYS will have the +S, +H, and perhaps +R attributes set, so you'll have to unset them before you can edit the file, and then set them back to protect against accidental deletion.

1MENUITEM=Windows
2MENUITEM=DOS
3MENUDEFAULT=Windows,5
4
5[COMMON]
6DOS=HIGH,UMB,NOAUTO
7Buffers=13
8Files=40
9DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\Himem.Sys
10DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\emm386.exe I=b000-b7ff
11LASTDRIVE=E
12
13[Windows]
14DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\ifshlp.sys
15
16[DOS]
17DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:OEMC001

Essentially, we've got two configurations-- the CONFIG.SYS will load a set of common items and a specific item for the configuration you choose. If you don't choose, it will assume you wanted to boot into the GUI and will do so after the 5 second time out. You can change that timeout to be shorter or longer, of course.

AUTOEXEC.BAT

1SET CTCM=C:\WINDOWS
2SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND
3LH C:\WINDOWS\CTCM.EXE
4LH C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND\DRV\DIAGNOSE /S /W=C:\WINDOWS
5SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6 
6SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
7LH C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND\AWEUTIL.COM /S
8path=c:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND
9SET TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
10
11GOTO %CONFIG%
12
13:DOS
14LH C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /E /D:OEMC001 /L:D
15GOTO END
16
17:WINDOWS
18win
19
20:END

Similarly, AUTOEXEC.BAT will load some items common to both, but then go to the config matching what was selected in CONFIG.SYS.

Note: The

1 blocks above may have scrollbars so be sure to get their entire contents.

Okay, I've done this and I've lost Windows.

I just get 'GOTO label not found'

Then you have a typo somewhere... Either in the label in autoexec.bat or in the menu config in config.sys. Double check!

gladders wrote:

Okay, I've done this and I've lost Windows.

I just get 'GOTO label not found'

The label was defined in CONFIG.SYS as the "MENUITEM", and it's AUTOEXEC.BAT referencing it. Maybe just match the case between them (not sure that it's really case-sensitive, though) so that both the MENUITEM=Windows and the [Windows] in CONFIG.SYS and :Windows in AUTOEXEC.BAT match, or do MENUITEM=WINDOWS and [WINDOWS] in CONFIG.SYS and leave the :WINDOWS in AUTOEXEC.BAT.

OR (and this is probably the better hypothesis) the label wasn't found because the

1 blocks have scrollbars and you didn't get every line out of it, hence the label not being found (since in my own view of that page it gets just one of the labels):
2[img]http://www.colonslash.org/special/vogons/scrollbaroncodeblock.png[/img]
3(In fact, in that post I said that the [CODE] blocks may have scrollbars...)

And be sure to recheck your CONFIG.SYS; same scrollbar situation on that.

You can also use the "Select All" and copy/paste into NOTEPAD or whatever.

In case browser issues make it hard to get the full text out of my

1 tags, here we go NOT using [CODE] tags this time just so you can see it all.  Makes it a little harder to tell where spaces are, 1s from ls and 0s from Os, but there's only so much I can do.
2[b]CONFIG.SYS:[/b]
3[quote]
4MENUITEM=Windows
5MENUITEM=DOS
6MENUDEFAULT=Windows,5
7
8[COMMON]
9DOS=HIGH,UMB,NOAUTO
10Buffers=13
11Files=40
12DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\Himem.Sys
13DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\emm386.exe I=b000-b7ff
14LASTDRIVE=E
15
16[Windows]
17DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\ifshlp.sys
18
19[DOS]
20DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:OEMC001
21[/quote]
22
23[b]AUTOEXEC.BAT[/b]
24[quote]
25SET CTCM=C:\WINDOWS
26SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND
27LH C:\WINDOWS\CTCM.EXE
28LH C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND\DRV\DIAGNOSE /S /W=C:\WINDOWS
29SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6 
30SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
31LH C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND\AWEUTIL.COM /S
32path=c:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND
33SET TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
34
35GOTO %CONFIG%
36
37:DOS
38LH C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /E /D:OEMC001 /L:D
39GOTO END
40
41:WINDOWS
42win
43
44:END
45[/quote]

Sorry, I've been very busy the last few weeks. Thanks for your efforts Alaric, but I followed everything you wrote to the letter, and I'm still getting the exact same fault.

Well, I managed to devise autoexec and config contents so I have over 600k free within W98. I'll have to live with that.

gladders wrote:

Sorry, I've been very busy the last few weeks. Thanks for your efforts Alaric, but I followed everything you wrote to the letter, and I'm still getting the exact same fault.

Well, I managed to devise autoexec and config contents so I have over 600k free within W98. I'll have to live with that.

Have you ever tried running the game with LOADFIX? I still think it might be that you have TOO MUCH free memory. Games of that era were sometimes confused with too much free conventional memory:

https://www.computerhope.com/loadfix.htm

Okay, so you managed to get Alaric's configuration running without the Boot-Menu bit?

You can always set your msdos.sys to "BootMenu=1" and boot into DOS that way.

Anyway, do you have enough memory in DOS now? What is the issue when you execute the game?

The game runs fine now, I freed up 621k of free ram. But Alarics boot menu won't run for some reason.

I'll no doubt be back with concerns about other old games that won't work!
'

When I can find my 98SE installation media and some time I'll try to work this out. I'll probably do it in a VM instead of real hardware, but the main thing is getting that boot menu to show up. It could require more changes to MSDOS.SYS.

The theory is sound; and in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they can be different.

gladders wrote:

But Alarics boot menu won't run for some reason.

If you don't see the initial menu letting you choose between DOS and WINDOWS, then it must be something about MSDOS.SYS.
Now I'm fully vested in getting this to work because it's something I used to do regularly to run DOS games on a Win9x system without fooling around with boot diskettes and stuff.

Thanks Alaric. Yes, I don't get a boot menu. I've triple checked the contents of the posts you made and I've input precisely.

After futzing around with a 386 system, I've found that one motherboard definitely is toast, the other is just freakishly unstable, and one that had been fairly reliable has a bad RAM slot because every time I boot it, whether the 4x4MB SIMMs are in Bank0 and the 4x1MB SIMMs are in Bank1, or the other way around, there is bad RAM found at byte 00100078h, which is the last byte in the first megabyte (if my arithmetic works out). Pretty sure that means it's trouble with the slot (and maybe I can clean it really well) but then I experimented with a 486SX2-66 system (that one was given to me in the '90s after I helped someone upgrade to a Pentium 133, still an incremental upgrade for them). It was also just crazy unstable.

So, now I'm on to my ol' reliable P200-S, with a 430FX chipset and 80MB (yes, I know) of RAM, and I've got Win98 installed on it. I installed it on top of DOS 6.22, so I can still boot to my "Previous version of MS-DOS". This is convenient because I can then boot to Win98 and not have the real-mode drivers interfering with 32-bit disk and file access, and boot to DOS 6.22 and have all my drives and my different memory configurations.

Once I get a better browser on it in Win98 I can log in here and post the specifics of the MSDOS.SYS for Win98 as well as the various configurations such that if you DON'T have a "Previous version of MS-DOS" available you can boot with the Win98 menu and just not go into Windows when you don't want to.