Ok, this is what I've been trying:

Arena:
Did everything according to the guide, it works, but at a horribly low fps

Daggerfall:
Did everything according to the guide. It doesn't give any errors in reguar DOSBox, but th screen is just black and nothing happens. In CVS, it says that Microsoft C++ Runtime library fails because CVS asked it to terminate in a strange way.

Battlespire:
Did everything according to the guide. It runs at a good FPS in the menus, and in-game too, but once in-game, it crashes after a few seconds and gives me some crap message about finding a 0 or something.

Redguard:
Did everything according to the guide, and when I start it, the screen is only black, and nothing works, at all.

Seriously, what the hell? Why isn't anything working even though I follow the guides from start to finish?

So I've been thinking about building an old crap computer with a DOS OS, just to get these games to work (at least Arena and Daggerfall). Can anyone recommend me some specs? Or, tell me what might be wrong with my attempts at running the games on XP?

Error zero is a faulty install. Delete and reinstall the game.

Since all these games save for Redguard use DOSbox, your best course of action is to read up on the documentation and better understand how DOSbox works, especially all the options you can set in the conf file. In ye olden tymes, people actually had to understand computers to play computer games--being as they were written mostly for computer nerds If you're not all that familiar with DOS and old computers and old games, then prepare yourself for frustration.

I have played all these games before with DOSBox, and I know very well how it works.

They've just decided not to work.

I may be able to help you with some of those problems. Whe you installed Battlespire, did you rename the batspire folder? If so, you have to change the path in the Spire.cfg file or you'll get that file 0 not found error message. Also, what OS are you using? If it's vista you have to remember to always run dosbox as an administrator or it won't work sometimes. Also redguard does'nt work with dosbox in vista, you have to use Glidos which can be found http://www.glidos.net/.

I'm running XP.

I changed the path, but now it's not even starting. Instead, it says "unable to install or detect VBE 2.0" and then it stops completely.

Well, I know why I get the C++ runtime error in Daggerfall now:

The patch.

When I install the patch, the game doesn't start on regular DOSBox and crashes on CVS DOSBx. When I don't install it, it doesn't run on any of them, but it doesn't crash.

Wow, you have no luck at all.

Where is your Daggerfall install? How did you install the patch?

Try switching between full and window screen mode when daggerfall doesn't start.

Don't run CVS, run .72. You'll get wonky performance with CVSes.

Arena, CTRL+F12 to speed up the speed, also 'dynamic core' sometimes helps people get better performance. Also you can move the detail slider, it helps a lot - Arena isn't a extremely fast game so you can't expect to get a large amount of fps.

Daggerfall, use .72.

Battlespire, if you get that error, mount the cd where its pointed to in the config. The problem is is that it can't find the sound data for the voice over files, if you mount the cd (-t cdrom) it'll work.

Redguard, use dgvoodoo, don't use DOSBox, you'll get awful performance, period and it won't work a lot of the time.

Daggerfall is working now, I just had to remove /dagger/ from the path in z.cfg.


I know, but I have tried everything and it won't work well anyway.


Already been doing that.


I am.