Have you tried a CLEAN INSTALLATION? Is everything else in working order in your PC?

I have two separate versions of DOSbox installed, and they are both doing it, so I wonder if if can be related to video drivers or some conflict. Yes, otherwise, PC is running perfectly.

(.73, and an older specialized CVS)

I changed from overlay to opengl, and will run it more today to try an get it to fail. Open to any suggestions!

Tried ddraw too? What videocard do you have? Do you have its drivers up to date?

NVidia card with newest drivers. So far it didn't crash at all today.
Can overlay cause crashes?

That was just my wild guess.

It's probably drivers or SDL implementation. If I recall correctly, Overlay was better suited for Ati cards. I am not sure. I usually have DOSBox set up for using ddraw too, and I have an Ati card.

Is there anywhere in a wiki or whatever that explains what ddraw actually is, vs opengl etc in Dosbox?

I don't use Dosbox for gaming, so I'm looking for nicest text image, and especially not crashng. 😀

Qbix, WD or someone else could explain that, but I think it's just a matter of choosing among different APIs to make graphic calls.

Overlay. I think it's commonly used for video.
ddraw. 2D accelerated functions.
OpenGL. A very popular 3D API.

And so on.

So why use ddraw for non game apps? Better than opengl in some way?

Is it very likely this was my crashing issue?

It seems to have stopped, which really worries me, as I use Dosbox on stage for music performances. It has always been 100% reliable until the other day..

DirectDraw is obsolete. It's likely your video drivers are the culprit.

Dosbox can crash if overlay lock fails (happens sometimes when screensaver activates for example). This is a bug in dosbox as it does not check whether overlay lock succeeded before writing to it.

edit: is it just me, or is this the same topic here? 😁