So, VPC does not extract the restricted filenames from the image as DOSBox does; I suspected as much. If you look at a directory of the image mounted in DOSBox, all the non-alpha characters are changed to underscores. That is an important difference between the two systems; but again, it's not the only issue, and can be gotten around with Daemon Tools or so.

The error message stating that the program should be launched from the CD can result from the failure of any one of a rather long list of checks that the app performs.

gidierre wrote:

would that explain why this virtual dos can do it right?

(sorry for double posting)

well apparently I can answer myself right away before falling asleep

it can't be so, since Win3.11, where aemn.exe just fails like dosbox and unlike dos 6.22, still seems to handle those **** non-alphanumeric characters right, so things will have to be more complicated:

and W31FW on the dos side of it:

How many times have I stated that the filenames are not the only issue!?

Anyway, going by the timestamps on the files, the app was last updated in 2000, possibly for compatibility with the NTVDM (where it does work)... wouldn't surprise me if they were not concerned about operability with Win3.x 😉

I made a couple of TSRs to get the app running in DOSBox. Run AEFIXIMG.COM when mounting the CD image, and AEFIX.COM when mounting otherwise. Both TSRs perform an adjustment of INT 21/AX=440E, but only for the D drive, so make sure to mount the CD there. The TSR for image mounts also applies restrictions to filenames coming from the app so they match what DOSBox uses. Source code is included in the archive.

Maybe it's of interest to the DOSBox devs: the app wants the "get logical drive map" function to return al=0 (one drive mapped) for a CD drive, but DOSBox is returning error code 1 (invalid function).

Thanks ripsaw, guess that function can use mount-enumeration.

Thanks guys.. wow.. that worked perfectly fine

Thanks ripsaw8080.. you rock...

and special thanks to gidierre, I know you spent times on this one...

Thanks all