a .bat file as configurationfile ?
aren't you messing things up ?

What the hell is Windows doing in d:\, from the looks of it it's a 64 bit version, probably recent...and...if I recall correctly...starting with Vista, whatever partion Windows uses to boot gets called C:\across multiboots of different versions...though you can probably change the location for program files (sort of bin/) and make it Unix like...
Anyway...since you didn't bother to read the docs, though you did check for their presence 😜...here's a quick explanation that might or might not help you.
.bat files are batch files...basically they process n commands in succession (you can do more, but bare with me) so you could, for example, do this:
nice.bat

1d:\
2cd %programfiles(x86)%\dosbox
3REM Last line won't work under Take Command LE, but under normal
4REM CMD it sends you to the system defined path for WOW64 
5REM program files 
6dosbox -conf "d:\dconfig\hercdosbox.conf"
7REM The quotes are in case you used spaces in the path name...

The thing above is a nice little batch file that runs dosbox with the .conf file you specify at the location you specify...on to the .conf files.
.conf files are the files Dosbox uses to get its options, plain text and editable as you please, they even include some nice comments on what the options do, but they are DEFINITELY NOT batch files...
There's a section in .conf files you can use to emulate autoexec.bat (oh the wonderful DOS years) and set your mounts automatically, your path, or whatever you want.
So, to wrap it up, look for a .conf file in d:\dconfig and call dosbox passing that filename as an argument to -conf.
Whew

lucky7456969 wrote:

Hi, I've been trying to start an "hercules" build of DOSBox from program files (x86)\DOSbox-0.74\Dosbox_hercblend.exe […]
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Hi,
I've been trying to start an "hercules" build of DOSBox from
program files (x86)\DOSbox-0.74\Dosbox_hercblend.exe

My shortcut contains the following
"D:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74\dosbox_hercblend.exe" -conf D:\dconfig\Dbox.bat

But the configuration file still did not get loaded. Any ideas why?
I've checked the documentation.
Thanks
Jack

Adding to bloodbats writing, executing the above command on the command line of your windows (start cmd.exe) should give you pointers where it fails

Sorry, my bad... I have sorted it out now. Please close this thread!
Thanks
Jack