Hmmm. Try this command before starting the game:

core normal

sadly, it doesn't help
to make things worse i can't seem to get it to run at all anymore...

seems that the problem is either related to the game cd or the dvd drive, since I tried copying the files from the cd to another folder and mounting it as drive d. I can play the game but no music since the music ran directly from the disc. oh, well 🙁

finally got music by making a cue image of the cd and mounting it as drive d ... tried iso image as well, but that was without music 😈

ISO format does not support Red Book audio tracks.

i'm a noob in that department, first time i had to make a cd image to get a game working 😊

I realize this thread is old, but I'm having the same problem and I've spent SO much time googling for a working answer.

I have p3 450MHz processor 448MB RAM using win2k and I have mounted everything in dosbox according to the instructions, my disc is a copy run through alcohol 120% and mounted through dosbox as a cd drive since it won't run as a real disc and that running from hd is faster than from a disc.

I came to dosbox because the compatibility mode doesn't help anything, the main issue seems to be that the mouse or keyboard won't work when run off the windows program, I have all the patches installed as well.

So with dosbox, I get as far as loading up a level and a few seconds in, it hits that error message there. I've reinstalled it several times thinking it was wrong, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Any help would be appreciated.

Sadly, I have no idea, what your problem could be. For me, making the image of the CD solved that particular problem completely. Wish I could help.

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/System_Requirements - it could be that your PC is just too slow for the game to be ran through dosbox, even my laptop struggles when there are those witches flying around and casting wind, not to mention when trying to run it in highres mode.

Odd, I even made a new copy in cue format from my previous iso format and it was worse, it didn't even get past the menu screen. I don't think it's the cpu speed, I did notice a lag when doing fullscreen and it WAS playing, but it won't even work on my laptop (1.73 GHz) so I really don't think it' speed that's the issue. I just wish I could get this working in win2k normally though compatibility mode like that feature was designed to do. Even that ACT doesn't help.

Dungeon Keeper Gold works in 2000,XP, 2003 32bit\64bit, XP 32\64bit.
ALL OS's require "Windows 95 Compatibility mode" to be applied.
Under 64bit OS's the installer will not work so you'll have to install the game on a 32bit OS and copy the files over.

Under Vista+ OS's you'll have to play the game in Vmware 6.5+ with Windows XP as a guest OS and you'll of course have to apply "Windows 95 Compatibility mode"

Your mouse\keyboard issue isn't a DK problem AFAIK. In the 10+ years I've played and tested DK I've never experienced it.

Assuming this is Dungeon Keeper Gold then all you need to do is apply Windows 95 compatibility mode to the D3D Windows shortcuts (Both DK and Deeper Dungeons) and the game will work fine.

If that doesn't work then a long time ago I had to do the below:

OLD INFO
Dungeon Keeper Gold Edition
To get D3D to work:

Upon running the game in D3D you will be dumped back to the desktop. Read the following to fix it.
Install the Application Compatibility Toolkit v1.5.
Use QfixApp on the game and click the "EmulateHeap" box.
Click the "Advanced" tab. Then click "Create attributes file".
Then go to the AppPatch folder in the Windows folder and click on the .reg
Now all you have to do is run the game and it will always run without having to do the above every time!
Reinstall this .reg if you reinstall windows!

If you do decide to play DK in DOSBox then you should definetly be using a CUE/BIN file if you want to hear the CD Audio tracks.
I believe I remember hearing of some AI issue with the DOS ver of DK though.

That sounds like it might work, though the ACT I have doesn't match what you have, mine is called APCOMPAT.EXE and I can't find the qfixapp, the tick box says "disable heap manager on windows 2000, there is no advanced tab, and at the top it has a box listing the OS's with a radio button. It also has a tick box asking to make above box settings permanent, I wonder if that means I wouldn't have to keep using the ACT to run it after. I also don't get which registry file I'm looking for.

As for the cue, I may try bin, but I had no problems with sound doing it with iso. Perhaps because it was mounted on a virtual cd drive, so it would be like using the cd itself.

You want the "Application Compatibility Toolkit" not appcompat.exe

ACT v5.0 does work in Windows 2000 but you have to jump through some hoops. Haven't tried v5.5 yet.

v1.5 will create the fix you need assuming that's your issue.

If your laptop has an Nvidia card then that could probably cause the game not to work if the game works in software mode and not D3D.

If it does work in software mode but not D3D then your only solution is Vmware 6.5+

5.5 sucks, I can't figure out how to do a thing with it. You're not kidding about the hoops part, I spent a few hours getting it all to work. I do have an Nvidia card in this machine, how do I fix it? Thanks for the ACT. Also, an interesting thing to note is that when I have to alt+tab to get out of the frozen screen, if I job the mouse it slowly starts to move when it's returning to explorer. I am fixing keepd3d right, not keeper95? My Nvidia card is the geforce2 if that helps.

If you have a Geforce 2 then try using the drivers that originally came with the card or drivers from around the time that video card was released.

I think the fix is only needed for "keepd3d". The software mode "keeper95" shortcut should work fine without any modification.

If you can't get the software mode shortcut to work then either the game is corrupted, your video card drivers are preventing the game from working or something else in Windows is preventing it from working.