hmm, I wonder which dosgames need xcopy...
To me it sounds more like installation issues of pirated games that have homemade installation batch files that need xcopy.

Not really, though none pop to mind at the moment, I have seen my share of original titles using xcopy (Bud Tucker perhaps?). Eventually I got sick of it and made this workaround.

I'm talking mostly about CD titles.

Discworld is one such game certainly, and several of the old flight sims (F117A &c) use XCOPY in their kosher install.

I know this because I hit this problem at the weekend.

This is interresting, maybe I'll add it as a new plugin for D.O.G.

Its in my features to do list.😉

Thanks

Erik.

For info, the installation of the 'Ultima Collection' heavily uses xcopy to install the games to the HD 😀

For info, the installation of the 'Ultima Collection' heavily uses xcopy to install the games to the HD

But that's a Windows installer if I'm not mistaken.

Well on the CD, there's a windows and a dos installer (install.bat)
when running the dos installer in dosbox, it complains about not finding xcopy to copy some files (Ultima VII for example)

I see, sorry

Hi excuse my stupidity but im new to this i followed your instructions and then opened dosbox and the line command now reads

Z:\>path Z:\ ; C :\xcopy
Z:\>

Is that right now how do I install the actual game disworld I have pasted the CD contents to C:\oldgames\discworld

do i have to install xcopy or anything from the zip file or will that do itself thanks

Do you have that XCOPY.EXE file in the C:\xcopy directory?

What do the command

Z:\>xcopy

give you?

The game Flashback (CD version at least) uses XCOPY to install the game, so this is really useful! 😎

I think in my CD collection there's a couple more at least... Can't say for sure, so I'll have to check it out.

Thanks a lot, LoneLines! 😀

I can't remember any game in my collection using XCOPY, but thanks for the solution.

I did use it a lot in the old days, when I made custom INSTALL.BAT to multidisk games compacted with ARJ or PKZIP. I don't think any of them has survived.

Well, if floppy disks could survive for so many years, maybe we would still be seeing stuff like this:

But still, it would be nice (and if the authors thought so as well) to have this XCOPY replacement included in DOSBox, like if it was part of the system.

I doubt it will be included but I think I remember hearing Qbix say that he wanted to offer downloads (like HD images and utilities) that people could use in DosBox. Not sure if he plans on doing that.

Is there any Norton Commander clone that can be distributed freely? That could be handy. Which reminds me I have a shareware version of UFO - Universal File Operator hidden somewhere in my PC.

You've already written a link to UFO here:

GUIs in DOSbox

True, it's a nice and useful app. 😀

Ah, it's true. I tested it with DOSBox and runs fine.

hey! i know i'm digging up an old one, but i recently used this guide and i think I may have found some issues.

i used xcopy to install a game in dosbox, and it handled most things fine. i think it may run into problems though when xcopy is in a situation where it must create subdirectories. i will illustrate with some lines from the output file the game created after installation.

for every situation where it copies a file to a previously created installation directory, it gives an output like this. when i physically go to this directory after installation, the file is indeed there.

1D:\ESPNBB\162_28.S                                                       38,453

for the most part, the entire output file consisted of lines looking like this. however, there are a series of 10 or so lines at the end saying the following.

1XXCOPY  == Freeware ==    Ver 2.93.1  (c)1995-2006 Pixelab, Inc.
2
3
4
5Invalid destination directory name

i am not 100% certain, but i think the issue may be that a subdirectory must be created, and it does not currently exist while xcopy is running. i was hoping that it would say what files it was attempting to copy when encountering these errors, but it did not.

any pointers or workaround would be a great help. even if not, i figured it would be good to bring this issue to your attention.

Maybe you need some option to XCOPY, like /S for it to create the directories?