Corrupted installation?

Did you try under NTVDM?

NTVDM? if you mean vdm sound then yes i did try it... and these games work fine on old pc... blood as stated did work in dosbox but in new version it doesnt and settlers 2 just doesnt work.

NTVDM = native Windows NT/2000/XP dos support. (Using VDMSound is using NTVDM with sound emulation provided by vdmsound)

that doesnt work with sound. and settlers 2 just crashes.

any more help?

Blood and SettlersII work fine for me, standard configuration.
Try both with sound disabled, and run them from mounted c:\
(like mount c d:\games then c: and cd blood + blood.exe).
Try the different cores, disable xms and ems etc.

Settlers2 works fine on my PC, when using the dos32a replacement for dos4gw. I do have to use soundblaster, instead of Gravis Ultrasound. The latter just crashes. The core option of dosbox is set to "dynamic", I don't know what happens with "normal".

It is very slow BTW. My Athlon X2 3800+ can play it at 486 speed... (meaning, it's well playable, but the scolling is a bit laggy). In Linux it plays much better in dosemu, but for some reason, the midi doesn't work in it anymore.

🤣... i forgot about my thread here...

whats dos32a?

Dos32a is google 😀

🤣 thanks... im now back at the original problem i was experiencing way back...

the refresh rate is stuck at a setting that my monitor doesnt support... the pictures garbled as soon as i start the game from the main menu. (can get to games main menu)

any ideas on how to force a diff. refresh rate while playing with the dos32a.exe replacement file.

i know the games a legit copy. and i am 100% sure that it works if used in proper dos environment.

Is the garble accompanied by a sqeeking noise from your monitor, and does it look like very dynamic electronic interference? Or is it the kind of garble you could see in an image or movie? I suspect the latter, because you would have to have a very old monitor for it not to have oversync protection. What kind do you have?

Assuming it is the refreshrate, you will have to know what resolution and colormode dosbox switches to, and set it the refreshrate for that. In Windows, this means setting your desktop to that colordepth and resolution, and then choosing the refreshrate.

What happens BTW if you select a different resolution in the settlers options menu? With different, I don't necessary mean lower. Also try higher.

i've tried what was sugested in your secon paragraph and it didnt work...

your first paragragh makes no sense. (it looks distorted and has the words invalid frequency [which to me is an unsupported refresh rate])

no diff. occurs changing ingame options.

Your screen says invalid frequency and it displays a distorted image? When it has oversync protection, it shouldn't display anything, because you can destroy the monitor with it. I ask again, what monitor do you have?

This is really strange, because dosbox sets it's own graphical mode. As far as I know, the game doesn't have any control over the refresh rate.

Do you have access to another monitor perhaps?

A game under dosbox has no control over refresh rate, though changing emulated screen mode can change what screen mode dosbox uses of course. AFAIK, dosbox has no control over refresh rates either - the default just gets used for whatever mode is selected. You might be able to change it in your graphics card settings though.

I'd suggest trying different output modes, and failing that, try setting fullresolution to something specific like 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768. Could also try setting scaler to normal3x or none.

if you run in windowed mode dosbox will not touch your refreshrate. (AFAIK)

Are you actually running the game in DOSBox or are did you just install DOSBox and assume it's always active ?

i figured out what halfgaar was talking about... settlers 2 works now... (needed to replace dos4gw.exe then run it in dosbox)

and so does blood 1... im starting to like that dos32a replacement file... makes dos4gw games work in dosbox.
----------------------------------------------------
i know how to use dosbox and i know how to adjust its defaults... i prefer d-fend tho... my problems are fixed so theres no need to panic.

Should you ever come across a dos4gw game that doesn't have a dos4gw.exe file, then it's embedded in the executable, or some other datafile. Dos32a provides tools to bind dos32a to those files, instead of dos4gw. The "sb" tool is the one you'll need most.

If dos32a fixed it BTW, then it was not a refreshrate problem.

everything after this point relates to settlers 2.

it is a refreshrate problem when running it outside of dosbox.

i can run the game fine at 40,000 and 50,000 cpu cycles and yes the scrolling is slow... apart from that there is no problem.

and i use the dynamic core.