Tried core=normal and using loadfix?

Just a shot in the dark.

I totally forgot about loadfix!

Unless I missed something, here's what I did after your suggestion, eL_PuSHeR:

I set core to normal
then ran the following commands, each time after closing and restarting dosbox (the only modifier was under autoexec I had it go straight into the game folder):

loadfix -8 lsand.exe
loadfix -16 lsand.exe
loadfix -32 lsand.exe
loadfix -64 lsand.exe
loadfix -128 lsand.exe
loadfix -256 lsand.exe
loadfix -512 lsand.exe (event one)
loadfix -640 lsand.exe (event two)

Up until 512, the game would let me select either EGA (1) or VGA (2), and each of them still gave the same error dropping to the prompt, just like the picture in my post.

** event one - It didn't even run the game. http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/7343/dosbox003.png
It just dropped back to the prompt giving me allocated and freed.

** event two - Almost the same thing as event one. http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/6623/dosbox004q.png
It dropped to the prompt, only this time giving me memory allocation error
(however I was pretty much expecting this in some weird way. Call it a gut feeling)

So, I switched back to auto for the core and repeated these steps.

Still no joy, same things as last time.

I have a few things swimming in my head:

Should I just make a folder on my main harddrive, label it 'DOSBOX', and have dosbox mount that; just incase it's some kind of file read error.
I am also wondering if there was anything with my archiving that I did wrong with this file. I've had it on my hard drive, which has been giving me NO errors, and the archive (rar) has archiving options: Create Solid archive, put authenticity verification, and put recovery record turned on when I made it (maybe I should read up and see exactly what those do, but they sounded good at the time).

I trust the contents of this archive since I was able to install it onto a physical DOS machine from the same media I used to install it with DosBox version 0.63, when I started using Dosbox (I jut wished I remembered fi this game worked or not back then)

So... anything else? Or hass this game been broken sometime between 0.72 and 0.74???

Of course, this would be even more of a testable event if I had the original media. As state dbefore, I need to get my father's lazy ((expletive)) to actually get my box and send it to me, which will probably be a while. Months even. (He is that lazy)

So, you tried allocating all, or nearly all, of conventional memory and the game wouldn't run... who could have guessed?...

Anyway, I didn't see any mention of you configuring the sound in your "already installed" copy, so it may have bad settings from the prior installation. Run SOUND.EXE and select SoundBlaster Pro 2 with address 220 and IRQ 7, assuming you're using DOSBox defaults for the SB settings. A wrong address or IRQ could result in just the kind of error you initially reported.

O.O

... :: palm to face ::

consider the issue resolved. That worked. Thank you ripsaw8080. The problem wasn't different settings, I didn't bother to set them BEFORE archiving the game. I never change the settings.