H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 07:37:

Maybe if drive letters have been altered since the install was made, if a new harddisk was installed or something?

I found this comment describing the no cd problem with Mortal Kombat 1+2 CD-ROM:

Re: Mortal Kombat 2 with Vdm and DosBox

And QBix's answer probably explains what happened:

Qbix wrote on 2010-07-19, 18:49:

dos games don't like that D:\ is missing they tend to do things like check if C exists=> yes check if D exists => yes check if […]
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dos games don't like that D:\ is missing
they tend to do things like
check if C exists=> yes check if D exists => yes check if E exists.
If it gets a no on D:\ then it won't check E:\

So, if the CD-ROM drive is set to E: and there simply is no drive at D:, then the game might fail the CD-ROM check. But that's different from what is being discussed in this thread.

I have verified that Mortal Kombat 1+2 CD-ROM works from drive E:, as long as there is a HDD drive/partition at D:.

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 07:37:

jh80 wrote on Yesterday, 07:05:

You sure? Can you provide more details? […]
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Starcat wrote on 2025-09-17, 19:36:

The Mortal Kombat PC CD-ROM edition is like that. You can install it from E:, but when the game is executed and performs a CD check, it will fail if the CD is not present in drive D:.

You sure? Can you provide more details?

I just checked the Mortal Kombat 1 CD-ROM version it played fine with the CD in E: - played music from the CD and everything. I also checked Mortal Kombat 2 (1.0) and no problems there either.

Again, I'd be shocked if a big release like that missed something so obvious, but I'm sure it happened somewhere at some point.

Maybe if drive letters have been altered since the install was made, if a new harddisk was installed or something?

The drive letters haven't changed since install as my config.sys is the same, the only modification that Windows made post install was to comment out mscdex in autoexec.bat. I have a SCSI CD-ROM (D:) and an ATAPI CD burner (E:).

config.sys:
device=C:\WINDOWS\himem.sys /testmem:off
devicehigh=c:\cdrom\aspi4dos.sys
devicehigh=c:\cdrom\aspicd.sys /d:mscd001
devicehigh=c:\cdrom\oakcdrom.sys /d:mscd002
files=60
dos=high,umb

But I see the subtle difference now. I don't have multiple HDD partitions, rather multiple drives.