Could be this, Paste from the DOSBox FAQ :

"This is a windows 95 executable."
"This program must be run under win32"
"This program must be run under Microsoft Windows"
"This program requires Microsoft Windows"
"This program could not be run in dos mode"
“Illegal command: win”

* Could be that your running a Self Extracting Archive in DOSBox. Use programs such as WinZip and WinRar to extract them.
* Well it is what it said, a Windows executable. DOSBox is only a DOS emulator, so it can only run DOS executables, nothing else. You can run Windows 3.11 and run games from within it but, that is as far as it goes for the moment.
* If the game manual said it is DOS compatible, then search for an exe that hasn’t got “win” in its name, unless “win” is part of the gamename itself.

Erik.

i'm completely clueless about DosBox i have version 0.72 and i'm trying to play Gizmos & Gadgets I have the .exe file saved in a file in my C drive but when i try to open it with the command
C:\Gizmos\ssg.exe\ it comes up with illegal command... can someone tell me what i'm doing wrong?

In DOSBox:

mount C "C:\Gizmos"
C:
cd \
ssg.exe

or perhaps

mount C "C:\"
C:
cd \Gizmos
ssg.exe

Thanks so much 😁