uhm. check what the cycles and core is set to in the frontend. you might want to set it at auto and auto

I had a look at the thread below and it said there were a couple of problems related to DOSBox, D-Fend Reloaded and Vista. However it doesn't provide any help with this.

Re: D-Fend Reloaded (new frontend)

I did what you suggested and looked at the cycle and core settings; the emulation core was already set to auto so I left that as it was, and I then changed CPU cycles to auto (I presume this is what you meant?)

I then tried to run the game again and it was still as slow as before. Any ideas?

Please use the official dosbox 0.72 release without any frontend for testing.
This simplifies things greatly. Then have a look at the dosbox.conf file,
check if you can edit it, if it gets saved correctly, and if the values are
used by dosbox.

You see yesterday I did use the original DosBox without a frontend to test it, and I had problems understanding what was going on. In addition, whenever I tried to mount the directory, I had further problems in that it didn't seem to work - which was why I downloaded the frontend.

If I stop using the frontend surely I'll end up at square one again? At least with the frontend I was able to get the game running, albeit slowly...surely that's progress?

Edit: I am now looking at the DosBox configuration file but I'm not sure what it is I need to edit.

If I stop using the frontend surely I'll end up at square one again?

Yes, thus solve that and continue then. Especially as solving it requires that
you understood how the mounting works (see the readme/various guides).

or use a different frontend. One that doesn't change dosbox it's default values like D-Fend Reloaded does.
DBGL is a good one. then the game will run (probably) at the right speed

Also, don't forget to mount your CD-ROM (-image) and maybe try using different audio settings (setsound.exe).

Ok thanks for all the replies so far guys, I first tried using a different frontend - the one suggested - just to see if it made any difference - it didn't. I also fiddled with the sound settings to see if that helped and no luck, so I'll have to try and work it out without a frontend as previously suggested, I'll give it a go tonight and then come back here if I have any problems. Thanks for the help! 😀

As i said get the mountings right (without frontend preferrably), reinstall the
game within dosbox (stick to the mountings) etc.

Hey, I've tried mounting it manually now, and I'm having a few problems.

I used the guide on this thread: 60 seconds guide to getting your game to run in DOSBox

I followed the instructions from the guide for Vista, and set up the folder for my game, C:\Users\Beck\Documents\DOSBox stuff\Theme Hospital. I then placed the game and associated files into this folder. I don't yet have the game on CD-Rom. The reason is that I downloaded a demo of it in order to test whether it can be played on Vista, ahead of purchasing it, as I didn't want to waste my time/money. Below is exactly what I typed into DOSBox in order to try and mount the directory:

mount C C:\Users\Beck\Documents\DOSBox Stuff\Theme Hospital

Now when I did this, a notification came up that "C:\Users\Beck\Documents\DOSBox doesn't exist".

Is there something obviously wrong that I am doing? This is why I was using a frontend previously; it mounted it fine when I used D-Fend and DBGL before. So I figured it must be an error I'm making, not something wrong with the file or directory, if the frontend is able to mount it but not me, right?

But I can't work out what I've done wrong (taking into account I'm not too technically minded - all I wanted to do was play the game on this OS!) Can anybody point me in the right direction?

If there are spaces in the path then you need to use quotations so:

mount C "C:\Users\Beck\Documents\DOSBox Stuff"