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Hi. I have a laptop that doesn't seem to run MS-DOS very well. Could you guys tell me how I could run ZZT on Windows XP properly? Also, when I open ZZT up in a window (not full-screen), it disappears after a few seconds. It also happens when I boot up Norton Antivirus. Does anyone know why this is so?

Thanks for whatever,

Ando

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dosb ... e?download

Give DOSBox a try.

And then? I tried to boot up ZZT with it, but I don't know my way around DOS, so I couldn't.

Sorry. I'm really bad with computers.

Ando

go to START -> RUN and type in command. I'm on in98 so i can't say where exactly you start. Dosbox is probably in C:\program files\doxbox-0.61 or whatever version you have now.

so type in "cd C:\progam~1\dosbox-0.61" without the quotes and hit enter

you'll now be in the dosbox directory.

then type "dosbox C:\"

dosbox will start up in a new window, you can close the command.com you ran by typing "exit" in it.

in dosbox assuming you keep your games in C:\zzt you'll want to type cd C:\zzt

if you keep it somewhere where the folder has a space in it, you'll want to use the first 6 letters of it then add ~1 like C:\my documents would be C:\mydocu~1

navigate to your folder and type in zzt and it should run.

edit: i should read other people's post better

None of the above seemed to work. I guess that I'm just incompetent. Anyway, are there other ways?

Ando

Did you try screwing around with the right click --> compatability settings? Sometimes that works.

Uh, if it is happening to your Norton Antivirus as well (something I missed in your original post), I'm getting a bit worried. It might be a virus that is trying to stop Norton Antivirus and might be hanging in certain parts of your memory (perhaps those occupied by Dos, thus explaining why MS-DOS dissappears after a few seconds). I would say try some kind of on-line virusscanner and see if it finds anything. (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ for example)

If it is a virus you should find some way to remove it.

Of course this might be all some kind of figment of my imagination and that your laptop truly does not like any kind of DOS program.

If it isn't a virus there are two other things you could try.

Right click on zzt.exe and go to properties. try to run it in windows 98 compatibility mode and turn on the (two/three?) checkboxes.

Scorched earth on your laptop. Completely format and reinstall it. This is a rather drastic measure, but if there really isn't anything really important on it it could solve a lot of problems.

Well, some good news and some bad news.

Bad news first. I tried all of what you said and yet I couldn't find a virus or still get ZZT to stay up. But the good news is that I tried running it in Safe Mode and it worked and saved just fine.

So to sum it up, I found a way for it to work (on my own, at that). But it's going to be a hassle to go into Safe Mode every time I want to access ZZT. So do you guys know of any other ideas?

Ando

FSFunky wrote: It might be a virus that is trying to stop Norton Antivirus and might be hanging in certain parts of your memory (perhaps those occupied by Dos, thus explaining why MS-DOS dissappears after a few seconds).

Dos, get out of Ando's memory.

But otherwise, you should just try dosbox because yeah. Here is the post that CyQ made when he discovered dosbox that I saved.

CyQ wrote:now run dosbox.exe. wait for the little dos prompt window to open, then type "mount c c:\zzt" (change c:\zzt to whatever directory zzt is in) and press enter. now type "c:", again press enter, and finally to start zzt type "zzt", enter.

zzt should now start, with like 550kb of free memory, and sound should come from your normal speakers instead of the pc speaker now.

Dr. Dos wrote:so type in "cd C:\progam~1\dosbox-0.61" without the quotes and hit enter

Shouldn't the command be "cd C:\progra~1\dosbox-0.61"?

I would advise that you try DOSBox again, Ando. You might want to go to the DOSBox downloads page and download a Windows frontend to use with DOSBox. I haven't tested any of the ones for Windows, but I use a frontend on a Macintosh computer, and it makes running ZZT and other Dos programs easy.

It worked great, guys! Thanks!

So far Ando, you're questions have been answered pretty easily with maybe t or try dosbox again.

Guess what I just did?

superbowl shuffle wrote:So far Ando, you're questions have been answered pretty easily with maybe t or try dosbox again.

Guess what I just did?

Uh, what did you do?

Yeah, what?