You should try determining if Windows is working fine for you. Is everything okay? is everything up to date? Do you have any non needed processes running in the background?

I keep a tight ship on that sort of thing, yeah. *nods*

Try the latest version of DOSBox. v0.72.

i have, actually, and that was when i first noticed the fail, then i tried older versions of dosbox to see if those would work but no luck.

Next thing you can try to narrow it down is disable sound, midi, joystick, and change output= in dosbox.conf.

I don't understand how to do this. 😕

Deinstall all dosbox versions (be sure you make a backup of config files and
stuff you might need later), and be sure the directories are empty/non-present.
Then re-download the latest dosbox version and install it.
Check if you can edit the installed dosbox.conf file and report back.

Yes I can edit the dosbox.conf. It's how I auto start games!! 😁

hmm, this might be related to a bad mismatch of sdl.dll and dosbox. 0.72 version of dosbox might not like the sdl.dll that came wit 0.65

I had this happen one time - I wish I remembered why it did that!

Pistol Slap wrote:

Yes I can edit the dosbox.conf. It's how I auto start games!! 😁

Ehm... Maybe i'm missing something here, but how do you autostart games when DOSBox is crashing upon launch? Anyway, just do what wd said. Make sure you download DOSBox from the official website, too.