bobby wrote:

as I'm on the point point of binning windows 7 and going back to good old XP !! Many thanks.

Maybe you should. DOSBox is not meant for this kind of thing. Other alternatives are Virtual PC or VMware, or XP mode if you have the Premium or Ultimate version of Windows 7.

I'm actually a little surprised you have a DOS program that will run in Windows XP but not in 32-bit Windows 7. 64-bit Windows 7 can't run DOS programs at all, but I was not aware that 32-bit Windows 7 had substantially different capabilities when it came to DOS programs.

As to your specific problem, all I can suggest is that you look at the 60 Seconds Guide if you haven't already – you might be mounting things incorrectly, or mounting things in a way that results in paths that the program does not expect. A debug-enabled version of DOSBox (see here) can sometimes be used to identify which specific files a program is trying to access and may offer a hint as to how you should be mounting your folders if you are in fact mounting them incorrectly. It is also possible you are trying to store files in a location which DOSBox does not have permission to write to (which is why the 60 Seconds Guide suggests a subfolder in your Users directory).

The only other possibility is that the program may require lower-level disk access for some strange reason, in which case you will have to boot MS-DOS inside DOSBox – but that seems a little unlikely.

P.S. Please don't use all-caps in your subject lines.

Hi Jorpho. Many thanks for your reply. I had previously gone down the VMware route but apparently my PC was not equipped with the right visualisation, so that was a non-starter and I assumed that was the case for all virtual environments. Which is why I tried DOSBOX. However, after reading your reply I had another search and managed to download XP mode from Microsoft, and after spending most of today setting it all up, changing to the right paths and libraries etc etc ..... BINGO ! It still needs tweaking a bit but, in essence, it's all running beautifully.
So, many thanks for your help and for taking the time to reply - you've cheered up a senior citizen no end. Problem Solved.