Need. More. Information. "Gibberish" isn't a very precise term, too.

Actually I was mistaken, with Dosbox you don't even see any text just the menu's buttons. Which for some reason don't work.
The gibberish is seen when just running the install.exe, it's similar to when viewing Japanese sites and Windows doesn't have the language pack.

Still. Not. Enough. Information.

The gibberish is seen when just running the install.exe, it's similar to when viewing Japanese sites and Windows doesn't have the language pack.

This isn't precise, either.

ASUS P5K SE
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6320 @ 1.86GHz
Nvidia 8800 GTS 320 MB
2 gigs RAM DDR2
Windows XP SP2
and using Dosbox's latest version

You are a bit thick, eh? OK, at least you've given part of the information that's neccessary. There's still some important info missing. What about a screenshot of the "gibberish"? You really should take the time to answer the rest of the questions from the post i've linked to two times. We have no crystal ball that shows us, for example, how you've mounted your drives, and other stuff. Are you installing from an original CD-ROM?

The gibberish problem doesn't matter anymore since it's not happening on Dosbox, like I said before, on Dosbox there's not even any text, just an empty menu and buttons.
I've used all the mount suggestions on previous similar threads, currently using this one for the CD drive.

mount D f:\ -t cdrom -label SHADOWCD

and mount c c:\dosgames

Everything else are the default Dosbox settings, just upped the cycles a bit.

Ok problem solved didn't notice I was writing mount D instead of mount d on the .conf file. At least that solved the no visible text problem and managed to install it. Dumb mistake really, don't know how I didn't noticed it earlier.

DOSBox doesn't care if you write drive letters in UPPERCASE or lowercase. You must have done something else.

Yeah, JackieKarma obviously just likes to waste other people's time. Btw, the game works perfectly with DOSBox 0.72 (installed from an original CD).

I installed Shadow of the Comet from an original copy of the multi-lingual (DE, EN, FR, ES) CD version of the game, after experiencing two common problems, so I thought I'd post the solutions here.

I used a fresh installation of DosBox 0.74 on Windows 7 64-bit. The first problem happens if you forget to mount a C drive. Starting the install.exe from the CD then just shows an empty screen with some French text at the bottom. The fix is of course to simply mount a C drive in the DosBox, as in

mount C C:\dosbox

given that the directory dosbox exists on your Windows C drive.

The second problem happens if you mount the CD drive (letter D in my case) as

mount D D:\

Then the install.exe only shows the error message "Install path must be C:\infogram\shadow.cd" and the only options is to exit the installation. To fix this, mount the CD drive instead with the command

mount D D:\ -t cdrom -label SHADOWCD

Then the installation should work as expected 😀

Really GREAT title this one, surely one of my favs... I love so much lovecraftian atmosphere and those faces in foreground when our character talks to others. Ah, and great soundtrack too.

I apologize for reviving the thread, I have a few question and a possible contribution.

Is it documented or mentioned somewhere how to play this game from the CD image without an actual installation?
Playing the game without installation, can that cause game breaking issues or other major type of issue?

I recently tried to get back into this childhood gem but didn't want to do an actual installation since, at first glance, the contents are almost identical with no unpacking or expansion, I also didn't want to duplicate data unless unavoidable.
I was able to run the game without installation with the following procedure:

1[autoexec]
2@echo off
3mount c .
4imgmount d "Call of Cthulhu - Shadow of the Comet.iso" -t iso -fs iso
5if not exist c:\INFOGRAM mkdir c:\INFOGRAM
6if not exist c:\INFOGRAM\SHADOW.CD mkdir c:\INFOGRAM\SHADOW.CD
7if not exist c:\INFOGRAM\SHADOW.CD\SHADO_CD.CFG copy d:\SHADO_CD.CFG c:\INFOGRAM\SHADOW.CD
8d:
9SHADOW.EXE
10exit

The important part is to create the path INFOGRAM\SHADOW.CD and place inside it the file SHADO_CD.CFG found on the root of the CD.
I haven't done extensive testing but it seems to work fine, save files will be stored inside INFOGRAM\SHADOW.CD