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How to start a DOS game on a modern Windows PC
The following step-by-step tutorial will explain you how you download a DOS game, how to save it to your hard drive and how you install and use the software DOSBox (a free software to play old DOS games), which starts the game on your Windows PC.
Please follow all steps exactly like explained here and only proceed to the next page after you have read, understood and done what needs to be done. Otherwise you might miss an important step or information and your game will not start. I recommend to read the whole step first and then do what it asks you for.
Step 3: Download and install a DOS Emulator (DOSBox)
Info: Not many old DOS games can be played on modern PCs without using a so called emulator software. Some of them might start without an emulator under Windows, but you might experience problems like hearing no sound, no mouse is available or the game is simply too fast to play. If you have already tried to start the game directly under Windows and it did not work as desired, you should try to use the DOSBox emulator which you can download and use for free. An emulator makes sure that the sound and graphics work and that the speed of the games is normal. I recommend DOSBox since it's the best free software out there. The following instructions are based on DOSBox.
What to do: Go to the DOS Emulator Page, download DOSBox-Installer.exe and save the file to your hard drive into a folder of your choice (example: c:\dosbox\). Now start the file and install the software. If you want to uninstall DOSBox later on, you can use it's uninstall function to remove it from your PC.
Step 4: Starting DOSBox
Start DOSBox. You will find it in your Windows Start Menu in a new folder after you installed it successfully. Two new windows will open now. The one with the blue start screen is the window where you enter all following commands. The other window will stay in the background, don’t close it.
Step 5: Only for non US keyboards
Step 6: Creating a virtual drive c:
Info: Your game-folder now needs to be "mounted" as a virtual drive c:. Virtual means that the files are not really there, but DOSBox will pretend that they are located under c:\. When you go to c:\ and view a list of the files, the files and folders of your game-folder will show up. This is needed to run your game.
IMPORTANT: Always press the Enter-Key after typing one of the following commands to execute it.
What to do:
Example 1: If your game-folder is c:\dosgames\pacman\, type in the following command
mount c: c:\dosgames\pacman\
(then press the Enter-Key to execute the command)
Example 2: If your game-folder is d:\pacman\, type:
mount c: d:\pacman\
Example 3: If your game-folder is e:\games\pacman\, you type:
mount c: e:\games\pacman\
If you did everything correctly, you will get the following message (for example 1):
Drive c: is mounted as local Directory c:\dosgames\pacman\
Step 7: Go to drive c: and find the start or setup-file of the game
Type the following command to switch to drive c:
c:
(then press the Enter-Key to execute the command)
After successfully switching to drive c: you will see
c:\>
With the next command you will show a list of all files and folders in the game directory. At this point you need to act slightly different for each game. Some games have their own installation or setup file that you need to run first. Others can be started right away via a start file. To find a setup file, you should look for executable files like "install.exe" "setup.com" or "config.bat". Each game has different file names, so you need to find the right ones yourself.
Type:
dir /p
(then press the Enter-Key to execute the command)
You will see the directory list now. If you find a setup file, run it, configure the sound and graphics, save the settings and then run the game start file, which is usually something like "pacman.exe" "run.exe" or "start.bat".
Starting a file, no matter if it's the setup file or the start file is always done by typing the filename and pressing enter. An example:
pacman.exe
(then press the Enter-Key to start the file)
The game should start now.
If it's needed to go into a subdirectory like c:\subdir, type:
cd subdir
(then press the Enter-Key to execute the command)
To go back one directory (back to c:\), type:
cd..
(press the Enter-Key to execute the command)
