Trouble with ALL dos games! \ VOGONS

Trouble with ALL dos games!

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First post, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-23, 01:23

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Here's my problem. Whenever I start any DOS game, the game just freezes. Most games just show a black screen, so it's hard to tell what happened. A good example is King's Quest II. When I load the game, it just shows the logo and Lego Graham just stands there. He doesn't walk to the middle of the screen and drop his hat, he just stands there. No cheesy Greensleeves music, nothing happens when I push enter or escape. Just a frozen screen. All I can do is Alt+Tab, and manually shut down the process from Windows. This happens in every single DOS game I've tried.

This is not the first time it's happened to me. The last time, I isolated the problem to my AGP drivers. I fixed the problem by uninstalling them. And the next time I had to reformat, I didn't install the AGP drivers. Everything worked fine, and my modern 3D games didn't suffer any performance loss.

But just recently, I had this problem again. I haven't installed any AGP drivers, and there are none to uninstall. It's been a while since I tried to play a DOS game, so I can't just trace back what I've done since then. I really don't want to format my hard drive right now. What else can I do?

And also, I don't have this problem when I boot in safe mode. But I have all kinds of other problems, such as no sound, which you'd expect in safe mode.

Reply 1 of 23, by Snover

Posted on 2003-08-23, 02:49

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Your computer's hosed. Go buy a new one.

No, seriously.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 2 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-23, 02:57

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Wrong answer. Try again.

Reply 3 of 23, by Snover

Posted on 2003-08-23, 03:09

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It's possible a Windows Update installed your AGP drivers for you. (You HAVE been keeping up-to-date, haven't you?)

Are you using VDMSound?

...
oh yeah. and, your system's hosed. buy a new one. 😉

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 4 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-23, 03:26

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Yeah, I keep up to date. *doesn't worry about getting the RPC worm* As far as I know, I never got any AGP drivers from Windows Update. The only drivers I remember getting were Detonators, sound card drivers, and NIC drivers.

Reply 5 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-23, 03:26

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Oh, and it doesn't matter whether I use VDMSound or not. I get the same results.

Reply 6 of 23, by Nicht Sehr Gut

Posted on 2003-08-23, 04:52

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Originally posted by the cranky hermit Yeah, I keep up to date. *doesn't worry about getting the RPC worm*

Keep an eye on that. Last variant I heard of would actually go out and download Microsoft's update for you.

The trick, of course, is that it would infect your computer first (negating the protection offered by the patch). This causes a two-fold effect:

1) Unless you had already the patch in place, it gives you a false sense of safety since it would show you as already protected if you went to Microsoft's site.

2) It actually helps protect the worm from being overwritten by another worm.

*gah* Anyway...

It sounds like you have major-league nasties going on in your PC.

1) Are you using DirectX 9?
2) Can you run EDIT.COM?
Open a command prompt, type EDIT, then press ENTER
Should start up in the command-prompt Window. Can you use your mouse with it? Load files, etc...?
Alt+Enter to make it full-screen. Still works properly?

BTW, you any relation to the "Crazy Hermit" in Journey: The Quest Begins? Always felt sorry for that guy...must've been a VESA issue.

Reply 7 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-23, 23:13

the cranky hermit Offline

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Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

1) Are you using DirectX 9?

Yes. DirectX 9.0b.

Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:
2) Can you run EDIT.COM? Open a command prompt, type EDIT, then press ENTER Should start up in the command-prompt Window. Can y […]
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2) Can you run EDIT.COM?
Open a command prompt, type EDIT, then press ENTER
Should start up in the command-prompt Window. Can you use your mouse with it? Load files, etc...?
Alt+Enter to make it full-screen. Still works properly?

I have some interesting news. It works fine in windowed mode. But when I go full-screen, it locks up like my DOS games do. BUT... the parser still blinks, even though it doesn't respond to key presses. And there is no cursor at all. When I alt+enter back, it goes into windowed mode, it does become windowed, but it is still frozen. Thanks to this tip, I have managed to run a few DOS games in windowed mode. But most don't run in windowed mode. Thanks for the tip, I hope we can get somewhere from this.

Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

BTW, you any relation to the "Crazy Hermit" in Journey: The Quest Begins? Always felt sorry for that guy...must've been a VESA issue.

Nope. I never played that game. An interesting note, when I made the handle, I thought it was original. A year later, I Google searched my own handle to see if anyone was talking about me on their web pages, just out of curiosity, and I found out that there's a semi-famout blogger with the same handle as me. Fortunately, so far no one's confused me with him.

Reply 8 of 23, by Snover

Posted on 2003-08-24, 01:39

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Another one of these. I can't remember where the other thread is but someone else had this exact same problem.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 9 of 23, by Nicht Sehr Gut

Posted on 2003-08-25, 17:09

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Originally posted by the cranky hermit Yes. DirectX 9.0b.

We've been seeing issues with classic titles and DirectX 9. The hows and whys remain a mystery...

I have some interesting news. It works fine in windowed mode. But when I go full-screen, it locks up like my DOS games do. BUT... the parser still blinks, even though it doesn't respond to key presses. And there is no cursor at all. When I alt+enter back, it goes into windowed mode, it does become windowed, but it is still frozen.

Then something is wrong at the OS-level. EDIT should never behave like that.

About the only other thing I can figure is that a "motherboard monitor"-type title or some similar program that allows direct-hardware access. Since any DOS program that is full-screen is allowed direct hardware access, any other program allowing similar access might cause a conflict.

Try this reboot into Safe Mode (press F8 at startup, immediately after the BIOS screen). Does EDIT work properly in "Safe Mode"?

Reply 10 of 23, by dvwjr

Posted on 2003-08-25, 21:24

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This was from a previous VOGONS thread, it concerns the NTVDM.EXE subsystem having problems with PC faster than 2.0ghz ... The user in question has a 2.4 ghz P4 PC...

Problem hits NT4, Win2K and WinXP. From the Microsoft support site: 16-Bit Programs May Not Update the Screen on Processors Faster Than 2.0 GHz

Was fixed in WinXP (SP1) Win2K (SP4) and availble as a hotfix only for WinNT4. From his profile he in running WinXP Home, but no Service Pack 1 information was included.

May not be the problem, but hope it helps.

dvwjr

Reply 11 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-26, 00:29

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Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

We've been seeing issues with classic titles and DirectX 9. The hows and whys remain a mystery...
Try this reboot into Safe Mode (press F8 at startup, immediately after the BIOS screen). Does EDIT work properly in "Safe Mode"?

Yes, it works fine in safe mode full screen. As do all of my most primitive DOS games, such as King's Quest II.

Reply 12 of 23, by Schadenfreude

Posted on 2003-08-26, 01:32

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Read and learn, hermit:
showthread.php?s=&threadid=1697

This sounds to be your problem.

Rather than Windows Search, I recommend WinGrep (http://www.wingrep.com) or AgentRansack (http://www.agentransack.com)

Reply 13 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-26, 03:14

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I have a Logitech optical USB mouse. It didn't come with any software to install.

Reply 14 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-26, 03:17

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Plus, I'm pretty sure KQ2 doesn't try to initialize the mouse, but it hangs on startup anyway.

Reply 15 of 23, by Schadenfreude

Posted on 2003-08-26, 03:20

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Hey, cranky:
showthread.php?s=&threadid=1697

Read the WHOLE thread, esp. around page 2-3. Doesn't take THAT long to read.

Reply 16 of 23, by Cush

Posted on 2003-08-26, 14:50

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Yeah, scroll way down. Exact same problem; stuff crashing in fullscreen and working in safe mode. Was that ever a pain in the butt! Now I've got around 40+ DOS games working just fine. I used PowerDesk to ultimately ferret out the offending DLL.

Cush

Reply 17 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-26, 16:05

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I renamed winio.sys to winio.bak like Cush did and rebooted and ran KQ2. No luck. So, I did a search for files containing Ke386, and some things. Before I mess with anything, I'm going to post a link to a screenshot.
http://www.geocities.com/thecrankyhermit/K36.PNG

You'll probably have to zoom in on it before anything is legible. Anyway, portpro.sys looks suspicious. I'm going to rename it, reboot, and see if anything changes.

Reply 18 of 23, by the cranky hermit

Posted on 2003-08-26, 16:09

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That did it! After renaming portpro.sys and rebooting, KQ2 works again! Thank you, everyone.

Reply 19 of 23, by Cush

Posted on 2003-08-26, 17:26

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Glad you got it to work. I was down for a month and ended up rebuilding my Windows XP partition. It took a long time to get that straight as you can see from my post. Same Cranky Hermit from GameFAQs I suppose? I guess I'll see you around there.

Cush(1978)

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