So I managed to get my sweaty hands on a legit working copy of daggerfall, and finally managed to get it to install and run, but after a couple of crashes to 'dos' my computer froze and I had to press the reset button. Once back up I started up Daggerfall to find that the saves I made have vanished! Is this normal? Will it happen again? If so I'm going to get mighty bored of privateers hold!

Edit: I just tried to load up again and first the sound wasn't working, so I went back into the install menu and tried to reconfigure the sound but it said I needed to install the game again, so I tried that but it told me I didn;t have enough disk space for the huge installation (I have nearly 3 gig free!) and then crashed. When I tried to play without sound the new save I made had gone but my old saves were back, but when I clicked on one it crashed out with error code 210. When I tried to restart yet again it crashed with the same error when I clicked on High Rock in the choose race menu.

I have a funny feeling I'm just not meant to play this game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What method(s) did you follow to get it installed? The UESP Wiki process using DOSBox works like a champ..

first I used the 'official' windows installer from file plant, but then I used dosbox maybe that is what went wrong I couldn't get the sound right with the windows installer so I tried it via dosbox and ended up installing over?

Anyhow I've deleted it for now and when I get back from my parents next week I'll have another go.

Forget the windows installer and just follow the instructions in the pinned thread of this forum or the UESP Wiki instructions.