With the advent of Windows 2000 and XP, which moved away from the DOS-based roots of previous versions of Microsoft Windows, many people found most of their beloved classic games and applications from back in the day no longer working properly, and cast them onto dusty shelves never to be seen again. However, they may have been a little premature in their actions, as with a little know how and the right tools, it is possible to get those golden oldies running perfectly under XP/2000.

The Complicated Solutions

There are a number of solutions to this particular problem, some complicated and time-consuming, some not. The following are the complicated ones, which I m not going to dwell on for too long.

The first option is to dual boot two (or more) Windows operating systems on the same computer (for example, XP and Windows 98SE), and using the XP installation for day-to-day activities while booting into 98 whenever you feel like a trip down memory lane. However, the act of setting up a dual boot system the first time can be more than a little time-consuming, and setting up a totally new install of Windows for the sake of running two or three DOS applications seems a little wasteful to me. However, if you do fancy taking this method, I recommend you take a peek at this thread from SysOpt's forums: http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=148048

The second option is to use a piece of software such as VMWare or Microsoft's Virtual PC 2004 to create a virtual Windows 9x PC from which to run your old applications. However, this option demands a fair degree of technical knowledge as well as a good knowledge of the Virtual PC application being used, neither of which incidentally is particularly easy-going on the wallet. For this reason most people will want to avoid such an option; however, again if you are interested, see the following:

• http://www.vmware.com/
• http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

The Easy(ish) Solution

I could subtitle this section How to run your DOS applications without having to shell out a small fortune or spend a day tinkering with operating systems. For the most part, DOS applications can be run in some shape or form from within XP/2000 via the command prompt, however usually less than perfectly.

VDMSound

The main problem tends to be with sound, as DOS sound drivers cannot be loaded in either XP or 2000. However, help is at hand in the form of the excellent VDMSound, which is able to emulate DOS sound. In order to use VDMSound, one should download it from the following location and install the program using the provided installer, following any onscreen instructions: http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/.

Once installed, however, it is not simply a case of running a .exe. The VDMSound driver needs to be loaded into memory via the command prompt, prior to usage. The easiest way to do this, in my opinion, is to create a small batch file that executes both VDMSound and the chosen application/game together in one go. To create a batch file for this purpose, open a text editor such as Notepad and enter the following lines:

cd c: Program Files VDMSound
DOSDRV.EXE

This first part of the program will tell the computer to navigate to the VDMSound directory and load the DOS sound driver into memory. The second part of the program then tells the computer to run our desired application/game, in this case Speedball 2, stored on my computer's E Drive.

e:
cd e: Speedball
sb2.exe

The computer has now been instructed to navigate to the E Drive and the Speedball directory and execute the sb2.exe program. (NB: When dealing with DOS based programs such as this it is best to store program files in directories whose names are less than 8 characters long and have no spaces in so as to avoid problems with DOS naming conventions.) The full batch file is as follows:

cd c: Program Files VDMSound
DOSDRV.EXE
e:
cd e: Speedball
sb2.exe

All we need to do now is save the text file with a .bat extension rather than the standard .txt. This can be done by editing the filename or by using the save as feature as shown below (notice Save as type is set to All Files. This allows one to save the file using the .bat extension.)

Voila! Now all we need to do is run our newly created Batch file and our DOS game should load up with included sound. For all other DOS games/apps, all I recommend you do is edit (right clicking the file should give the edit option) your existing batch file to suit the other program and save it under a different filename.

(NB: The game/program will need to be configured to use a Soundblaster or equivalent as its soundcard using the included configuration programs such as install.exe shown above for VDMSound to work properly.)

DOSBox

In some cases, the problem may be a little more complicated than just a lack of sound. If so, I recommend you look up Dos Box, which acts as a kind of Virtual DOS program if you will, acting to all intents and purposes as DOS but from within the comfort of a Windows environment. DOS Box is somewhat more complex to use than VDMSound and demands a good understanding of DOS and its various commands; however, plenty of help is available for beginners from its main site, which also contains download links: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1