I found out that the program is attempting to rename RO.DAT as RO.EXE and back again. It does not appear to be write protected but perhaps Windows 7 has some new feature which is preventing this. I can manually change the DAT to EXE but the game will only work once as the code within the game itself automatically attempts to change EXE back to DAT. Although it won't let this happen, the EXE file becomes corrupt!!!

Does anyone know why Windows 7 is doing this? I am using DOSBOX but apparently that doesn't make a difference. I have set permission to "all" so what is the problem?

Make sure you are *not* running DOSBOX and the game inside the Program Files (x86) folder.

It's probably ok to run DOSBOX from their as an administrator but create a separate folder for you games off another HDD or partition or from the C: drive create a folder named games or dosgames.

Then make sure you have full control over said folder and install/copy your game folders/files there instead.

Hmmm. My DOSBOX files are all in a folder called DOSBOX and not under PROGRAM FILES (either one of them). The game fold is C:\PUZZLES\ROBBO

A test/workaround could be to copy the game on an image.

the exe/dat file might be open when renaming.
I changed the code of dosbox a while ago to allow this when renaming with FCBs. maybe regular renames need a similar treatment, or maybe they use the FCB rename thing/