Two questions:

1. Can the virtual C: drive be a directory that has more than 8 characters? E.g. "C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\" becomes virtual C:
2. Can I turn off 8.3 filenames in NTFS and still run Daggerfall? It's a minor performance tweak, since virtually no modern applications require them. This may be more of a question as to whether or not DOSBox can handle this.

Dosbox cannot handle more than 8.3. It's based on MSDOS. I recommend not putting daggerfall in a subdirectory of Progra~1

Thanks. Does it look for the 8.3 filename under NTFS, or just assume the name is in 8.3 format already?

You can mount any folder regardless of character length. You just need to remember to enclose the entire path in quotes. That way, if there are spaces it will still mount gracefully. Once mounted to a virtual C: drive, it's simply going to be treated as C:\. DOSBox will automatically truncate files down to the 8.3 format if necessary, so there is no need to change any Operating System settings to accommodate DOSBox. I just tested this to be sure. And to clarify, you can't actually disable 8.3 filenames. You can disable the automatic creation of 8.3 filenames from long filenames, but a filename that happens to fit the 8.3 standard doesn't suddenly stop working. According to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/121007:


If it does turn out that DOSBox fails to recognize long file names when the 8.3 filename creation is disabled, you should still achieve success by simply making sure your folder structure complies with the 8.3 standard. It shouldn't be necessary to enable the creation of 8.3 filenames if you're already complying with the 8.3 standard for your DOSBox apps.

Thank you!

You're welcome. By the way, I just did further testing. I tried creating a folder with a long name after disabling the automatic creation of 8.3 filenames and DOSBox still truncated it down to 8.3, so you should be good to go.