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DOSBox-X - "Bug" where doing a "warm" reboot from windows 95 makes the CD-ROM drive disappear

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First post, by Siboire

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Hello everyone,
I'm currently working on setting up a Windows 95 VM inside DOSBox-X for playing some old games, but mainly those awkward ein3x/win95 titles that either suck alot to make work on modern versions of Windows for a panoply of reasons or that can only run in a 640x480 window and cannot be (easily) resized/stretched (3-D Ultra Minigolf is one example among others).

Here's what I've got working so far :
-An 8GB FAT32 disk image where win95 is installed (2GB ain't enough)
-32-bit memory and file access
-Windows 95 + MS Plus
-A working config.sys and autoexec.bat files for running DOS games from within Windows and having the mouse+CD-ROM drive work (as long as a reboot isn't required)
-A working voodoo emulation, latest driver
-DirectX 7.0a and DXMedia 6
-WMP 6.4 and IE5.5 in case any game needs any of these or the codecs they provide
-Glide passthrough is set up and working perfectly, as well as Direct3D and DDraw
-Need for Speed II SE has been tested for Glide and Monster Truck Madness 2 has been tested for Direct3D, both run silky smooth and without artifacts/crashing (had to increase the cache size of the dynamic core to 64 instead of 32 for that)
-Sound, MIDI and CD audio playback

What I could NOT for the life of me get to work :
-When I go to start menu --> shut down... --> restart computer (or when a program wants you to reboot), DOSBox-X will complain that the drive letters are not "contiguous" and therefore refuses to mount the CD image. I suspect that the device reserved for the letter D: by DOSBox-X upon launch (the mount command line is in the autoexec section of the config file) remains so when Windows 95 reboots and then when DOSBox-X tries to mount it to the same letter again, it fails, tries to mount it on E: and then says the drive letters aren't in sequence. My question is this : HOW can I force DOSBox-X to actually mount the CD again when Windows 95 reboots? placing the "imgmount -u d" command above the one for mounting has absolutely no effect. It's as if the drive remains "locked" once Win95 starts until DOSBox is completely shutdown... which would defeat the purpose of having a special autoexec / config.sys configuration for a specific DOS program that requires a CD to run. All I can do right now is hope DOS mode will just launch without completely rebooting the VM 😒

-I have never been able to make a CD-ROM drive appear in Windows 95 if I don't mount anything on D first in the autoexec section of the config file. Is there a way to do it? Right now, it's as if the drive simply does not exist at all if I don't do that. Is there any way to get that to work? (though I doubt it'll solve the issue of the drive disappearing due to a conflict upon reboot)

If anyone has a suggestion, please let me know. I think these are long-standing known issues but you never know. Maybe someone found a workaround that doesn't involve completely restarting DOSBox-X for the sake of having specific configs per-game if necessary. Using the custom Autoexec and config.sys option in the cmd prompt shortcut's properties will cause the VM to do a complete warm reboot, screwing up the CD drive (exactly what I want to avoid)

Pls help 😁
Btw, I'm happy to hear anyone's suggestions on what I could do to improve this VM

Thanks alot

Reply 1 of 3, by torpedo

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I have never been able to make a CD-ROM drive appear in Windows 95 if I don't mount anything on D first in the autoexec section of the config file. Is there a way to do it? Right now, it's as if the drive simply does not exist at all if I don't do that. Is there any way to get that to work? (though I doubt it'll solve the issue of the drive disappearing due to a conflict upon reboot)

You can do something like

[autoexec]
imgmount c ..\_hdd\w98.vhd
imgmount d empty -t iso
boot -l c

i.e. mount the hard drive and an empty CD drive. Then you should be able to mount a CD in the drop down menu.

What I could NOT for the life of me get to work :
-When I go to start menu --> shut down...

My question is this : HOW can I force DOSBox-X to actually mount the CD again when Windows 95 reboots?

I don't really understand this part much, I have a hard time visualizing what your actual setup is. if you have the imgmount command in the autoexec section of the .conf file, then it will simply mount the bin/cue/iso on every restart.

Reply 2 of 3, by Siboire

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Thanks for the reply 😀

I can indeed do that but it still involes the mount command. It's not so much about mounting emptiness, but avoiding having to use the mount command first in order for Win95 to see the drive. Any ideas on how I could do that if it's possible?

For the second part, yes, that is what SHOULD happen and what I want but it sadly doesn't work. There's no problem doing this with Windows 3.1 or just DOS but Windows 95 doesn't work the same apparently. First off, I cannot just mount a folder and tell Win95 to install there like I would for windows 3.1. It MUST be installed on a disk image. That being said, the guest machine installed in that disk image CANNOT talk to DOSBox and DOSBox CANNOT talk to it, just boot it.
When you send a reboot request from Windows 95, it reboots the guest OS ONLY and does not completely restart DOSBox. The autoexec runs again but this time, it will complain about drive letters and refuse to mount the CD. Something in there does not reset properly when rebooting from Windows, something that apparently only a full DOSBox restart can reset. It's like doing the "Restart virtual machine" option instead of the one for restarting DOSBox-X itself. That's what doesn't work properly for running mount commands a second time after win95 has been booted once.

Reply 3 of 3, by torpedo

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I can indeed do that but it still involes the mount command. It's not so much about mounting emptiness, but avoiding having to use the mount command first in order for Win95 to see the drive. Any ideas on how I could do that if it's possible?

That's probably not possible, you have to emulate an empty drive, which is done through the imgmount/mount command.

For the second part, yes, that is what SHOULD happen and what I want but it sadly doesn't work.

Well, on my end it works, so it must be something specific to your setup. You're better off taking this to the repository as this forum is really more about SVN DOSBox rather than DOSBox-X. I'd create an issue on the repo, specify your DOSBox-X version, the .conf file that you're using etc.

https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues

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