Anybody who has or hasn't any problems under vista+rc1 with the
settings RedAvatar posted (max cycles+openglnb output)?

I recently got a new PC and have been playing around with dosbox on it. I use Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit. I can confirm that both 0.70 and the latest cvs crash with either opengl or opengnb as an output mode. The game I used for testing is Tomb Raider and I run it in full screen, cycles auto, core auto (it automatically switches to dynamic, max cycles). It crashes right after I see the logo and press esc to skip the intro - the main menu never appears and the screen turns black so I just close dosbox.exe. Directdraw, on the other hand, works perfectly on both versions and I actually have always been using surface on XP, and now I use ddraw on Vista. I think these two modes work just fine.

Something else that I can suggest is that the dosbox.conf file be moved to another location because it is in read-only mode in program files/dosbox 0.70 and notepad cannot modify it and as a workaround I have copied the dosbox.conf in another location, edit it there and copy it over to program files/dosbox (vista asks for file operation confirmation) but it is a hassle; another option would be to install dosbox somewhere else. And as a side note I can say that my games directory is not in program files so games in dosbox have no writing problems.

I have not had any crashing yet but I do notice sound skipping and possibly a bit of slowdown when using either opengl or openglnb with both 0.70 and 0.71rc1.
I have a dual boot with xp and vista, and it is the same on both. I am running an ati x1900 and have always had trouble running opengl output in dosbox.
I downloaded the 7.7 drivers tody and will see if they help any, though I doubt they will.

As a side note, when I ran the rc1 installer in vista, a box popped up saying that the application may not have installed properly, and asked if I wanted to re-install using the recommended compatibility settings. The installer failed to create a desktop shortcut, but otherwise seems o.k.

0.71rc1 installer doesn't install a thing to the desktop.
The warning is unfortunate though. Would have to track down which part of the installer causes the warning.
Did 0.70 installer such a warning as well ?

Yes, it did. Unfortunately, I saw no indication as to why, or what "compatibilty settings" are applied if you elect to re-install.

Such errors are sometimes indicative of Vista losing track of what happened during the install process and I've seen them before with commercial software and drivers.

I tried uninstalling 0.70 and got the same error warning after the uninstall as well.

But the installation went fine, including start menu shortcuts, right?

Yes.

I recently came accros this document that explains a lot of things when compiling programs for Vista. It is for Delphi but it contains also good stuff for other programming languages.

http://www.delphi.org.nz/file.php/1/VistaUACandDelphi.pdf

Erik.

tannerstevo,
could you try 0.65 ?
I think that the win 9x / win Nt detection command might cause the error flag. (added in 0.70)

I don't seem to get any crashes if I run the game from Dosbox without using the front end - a front end is similar to dragging the exe on Dosbox right?

if you don't change any setting in the frontend. Then to a large degree yes

DBGL? It executes something like

D:\tmp\dbgl\DOSBoxCVS\dosbox.exe -conf dosbox.conf -conf D:\tmp\dbgl\profiles\0.conf

with the working directory set to the appropriate dosbox dir. You may want to watch the console output (run DBGL with dbglcons.cmd) to see how your profiles are being started.

Java uses DirectX I think. Vista might not be too fond of using OpenGL and DirectX simultaneously. And like any other fresh-made cheese Vista has to ripen some time before it can be enjoyed.

Well with 0.70 I had not a single crash - using identical set ups it crashed 0.71 yet 0.70 ran fine. And considering Vista *runs* on DirectX (as in, the entire GUI is DirectX) it would be silly if OpenGL caused so much instability. In fact, I successfully tested many old OpenGL games in Vista (Deus Ex for example looks better in OpenGL and I completed the game without a single crash).

Does anything else besides output=openglXX work without crashes?

Yep - tried a bit of everything before and it worked fine.

Qbix,

I tried installing 0.65 and got the same message

I believe that error dialog is presented for DOSBox as (AFAIK) it does not add an Uninstall key to the system. I don't really understand why the team decided DOSBox didn't need an uninstall option...

There might be ways of getting around it using the current installer product - I don't know personally as I only develop MSI's myself 😀 You could always flip to an MSI using the WiX toolset - very easy... though I'm sure you've got better things to do 😉