1. What is your mount command? It should be "mount a a:\ -t floppy"
2. Did you mount a c drive? "mount c c:\dosgames" (the folder dosgames need to exist on your real C:\)
3. On further problems write down each command you enter in dosbox and what the result of the command is and post it here

Yes, I mounted the floppy drive as you typed it. Again, I've just installed another game off of floppies without a problem. C: drive is also mounted properly and I have many DOS games on it already.

Thanks for replying, Dominus.

Post your exact mounting commands.

Yes, as I wrote in 3.

At prompt:

mount a a:\ -t floppy

FYI, I edited the DOSBox .conf file so that D drive (CD drive) is mounted automatically at launch of DOSbox.

3. On further problems write down each command you enter in dosbox and what the result of the command is and post it here

And it seems we need your atoexec section changes to dosbox.conf as well.
Again, please be precise and report EVERYTHING you do to the letter. If you don't do this, helping you is not possible and you are wasting both our and your time.

At the end of dosbox-0.74.conf I have the following (typed immediately below "# You can put your MOUNT lines here."):

mount c c:\dosgames
c:\
mount d d:\ -t cdrom

So, after I launch DOSBox I type "mount a a:\ -t floppy which appears to mount it succesfully. I could then access the contents of 1942 PAW disk 1 of which includes "install.exe". I type "install" at the a: prompt and this is where I get the "You have selected a drive that doesn't physically exist!" message.

hmm, perhaps there is an install.bat on the floppy. Try "install c" (or variations for c:, c:\). If that doesn't work, see if it really is a batch file and post the contents here.

Thanks for the replies!

I tried all variations of install c: that I know of, to no avail.

However, I succesfully copied the floppies into the dosbox directory through Win7. From there I ran the 1942 install through dosbox. After some tinkering with installation directories, I finally got the game up and running!

Now I'm having issues installing the 3 bonus scenario disks. I have also copied these into the dosbox directory and in the installation window I get a "You can only install the game from the original disk(s)!" Running install directly from the floppy results in the same error.

For clarity here is my installation sequence:
-From Win7 I copied disks 1-6 of 1942 PAW into C:\Dosgames\1942 disks
-From Dosbox I went into c:\1942di~1 (same as '1942 disks' directory previously created in Win7) and ran install.exe
-During installation, I changed default install path of c:\mps\1942, to just c:\1942
-Installation completed succesfully and game boots from c:\1942 directory just fine!

As for the 3 add-on scenario disks, here is what I did:
-From Win7 I copied all 3 scenario disks into c:\dosgames\1942 disks\scenario disks
-Go into dosbox c:\1942di~1\scenar~1 and run install.exe
-In installation window I get error message "You can only install the game from the original disk(s)!" Same goes if I run directly from floppy.