Ever considered it's a bug in the game? 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

FeedingDragon wrote:

It works, poorly, in DOSBox and other virtual machines.

I guess you're talking in relative terms, because I'm pretty sure this game works poorly under any circumstances. 😉

Id say you have to install the game from the cd from within dosbox then it will think its been installed from I: and the cd drive letter is I:

I'm trying to install on a physical system (real DOS not DOSBox.) It works in DOSBox if I turn off the videos (though it's extremely choppy.) However, it fails to find the CD on the real system. The exact same CD on a modern system with DOSBox mounting the drive, and it finds it just fine.

Do the drive letters need to be contiguous? Is there a gap in the assigned letters?

collector wrote:

Do the drive letters need to be contiguous? Is there a gap in the assigned letters?

On my physical system I have 6 HDD partitions (C:-H:) followed by the CD (I:.) Drive F: is set up as a Games drive. On my DOSBox install, I just have C: for the virtual HDD and D: for the CD-Rom when I need it. My last test involved changing my CD drive to I: in DOSBox and it worked just fine. I tried installing it on drive H: & C: on my physical system and both failed as well. In DOSBox, I tried mounting 6 drives (C:-H: ) and it also works just fine. So I can only assume that there is something up with my CD-ROM drive 🙁 It's actually a DVD Omni-Drive, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Well, I seem to have found the problem, but don't know of an easy fix 🙁

I just spent the last 6 hours building a boot disk & cycling through 8 thumb drives to find one I could mount as a DOS 6 HDD to test the game on my main system. Ended up with HDD as F: for some reason, and the Blue-Ray burner as C:. Still haven't figured that out, but it boots and lets me install Undermountain onto my thumb drive, F:, without any problem. The game then loads up and plays just fine, though I can't get the audio to work (no DOS drivers for the sound card.)

So, for some reason, the DVD burner on my DOS system isn't reading the disk correctly for whatever disk detection routine the game uses. As a final test, I copied the disk to the HDD & used FakeCD to mount it instead of my physical drive, and the game now works. However, I don't really want to use that method, though I'm not currently lacking drive space. If this was a "copy" I would suspect something like Thief uses, checking specifically for CD-R media type. I also don't have easy access to a drive to replace mine with for testing purposes.

So, the next question... Does anyone have any idea why my DVD drive is reacting incorrectly? I have tried booting without any TSR's loading except CD-ROM & Mouse. I've tried several mouse drivers, though I can't imagine how that would have anything to do with it. Does anyone know of any way to get it working from CD like its supposed to? If push comes to shove, I'll use the FakeCD method, though I find that a bit distasteful.

Just for testing purposes, does SHSUCDHD work? (I would expect SHSUCDHD to more closely approximate a CD-ROM drive than FakeCD.)

Does the DVD burner work properly in DOS in all other cases? I would be inclined to double-check the Master/Slave jumper and the BIOS settings. (I encountered strange problems once when I manually specified a device in the BIOS rather than letting it auto-detect.)

Jorpho wrote:

Just for testing purposes, does SHSUCDHD work? (I would expect SHSUCDHD to more closely approximate a CD-ROM drive than FakeCD.)

Does the DVD burner work properly in DOS in all other cases? I would be inclined to double-check the Master/Slave jumper and the BIOS settings. (I encountered strange problems once when I manually specified a device in the BIOS rather than letting it auto-detect.)

I haven't tested SHSUCDHD fully. I tried that one first, but it complained because MSCDEX was loaded. I have the jumpers set to slave, and BIOS auto-detects it just fine. I haven't, so far, had any other problems with the drive.

** Update **

OK, I think I've tracked the problem down further, but still cannot seem to find a fix. Some of my games fail to detect the CD at some point when I try to play them. After they have failed to detect the drive, I lose access to that drive, even during a reboot (fails at the CONFIG.SYS DEVICE= line,) as long as I have a CD in the drive. This continues until I either re-boot without a disk in the drive, or until I completely power off then back on. I've tried 7 different CD-ROM drivers, and they all respond in the same manner. In all cases, so far, if I use FakeCD, it works just fine.

There are 2 games I've run into this problem on... "Descent to Undermountain" & "Menzoberranzan". There may be more, I'm still going through the CDs I found, and have only gone through 6 so far. It isn't high on my to do list right now really.

Well, got it fixed. Turns out that my 3rd HDD (Master on secondary IDE,) is bad 🙁 Disconnected it, and now everything works just fine. Don't know what the problem can be, exactly. I know I have the jumpers set correctly, I guess the drive itself is bad. 🙁