Do I have to do something special or am I just missing something?

yes, it's definitely something.

DOSbox has a good range of settings to aid in compatibility. While I haven't tweaked it in a long time and definitely not with Windows 11, if you purchase a game here I'd expect GOG to update the DOSbox settings themselves for each game to increase compatibility. It's why they include an entire DOSbox for each individual game—so that they can customise settings for each game.

I think you need to give a bit more details. Which games, what are your system specs? Are you running Windows 11 or 11S?

Fresh install of Windows 11 or an upgrade?

Does standard dosbox work (when you go to their site, download it and run it).

Does the programme event viewer log give any tips as to what may have gone wrong?

I'm using Windows 11 and all games running in DOXBox run flawlessly, so yes. I guess you miss something.

The GOG DOSBox releases are quite idiot proof, there's not much one can do wrong.
I don't know if DOSBox requires any C-Runtimes to start, but you could follow the "how to get started" guidelines that have been posted in several threads.


note: At some point I had to change the rendering mode, since the preset mode was not supported by my graphics driver anymore. The games would remain black with the pre set mode.

Find DOSBox configuration file with ".conf" extension in game folder and open it with Notepad.

Find in [sdl] section:
output=overlay

Replace it with:
output=openglnb

Try it with one game and see if it works. This setting helped me with Win10, might be similar with Win11.

I'll say again, Windows especially the 'newest version' is notorious for patching and breaking compatibility, like a lot.

Though i'm not sure why you'd use Windows 11 in the first place. Go back to Windows 7 if you can.

All games that worked on WIndows 7 still work on my computer, so far I haven't found an exception. Actually more Windows 95 games work now than on Windows 7 - or at least with less workarounds necessary, since virtual directories (from a program files subdir to one in appdata) were introduced.

DOSBox runs just fine, but a couple of months ago, a overlay mode was removed from Nvidia graphic cards drivers which made it necessary to a) change the overlay mode in DOSBox or b) use a modern DOSBox version and not the outdated one that is shipped with our games.

The biggest incompatibility step hit the user base with Windows 7 (actually Windows Vista, but hardly anyone used that for playing) with the introduction of the new user rights management and the removal of direct hardware access. That effectively killed AWE, EAX4+ and tricks like the ones used for EP1 Racer which caused the screen to turn white on modern systems.
Since then not much has changed - except maybe DirectInput, which was changed drastically from Windows 8 to 10, some games would not work with the new DLL if a XBox360 controller was connected.

That's not true. They include it in each game in case you don't have DOSBox or haven't purchased another DOSBox game. Their settings are pretty generic (and some don't work out of the box due to this).

You would use Windows 11 because it (like Windows 10, but unlike Windows 7) supports DX12/12U out of the box for all DX games built for DX12/12U. Compatibility in Windows 11 is the same as, if not slightly better than, Windows 10.

I have had similar experiences to neumi5694. Other than Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo (which I have a few ideas about how to get running), I haven't had any issues getting games to work in Windows 11 that a mixture of removing unsupported (since a hotfix for Windows 7 turned off the support) CD/DVD based disc checks, dgvoodoo2, Creative Alchemy and occasionally an emulation of a Windows 98SE machine (for 16 bit programmes) hasn't been able to fix.

As much as everyone likes to complain about Windows and Windows 11 in particular, the fact remains that if you're not worried about the privacy policy (which I'm not - I have far fewer issues having an American company see my data than I would allowing a Chinese company/the CCP see my data - which would happen if I used e.g. Tiktok) or having an MS account (which I don't actually need as I'm running a Professional version), if you want things to work with a minimum of tinkering out of the box and to still have security updates, for the vast majority of consumers, Windows 10/11 (increasingly 11 as 10 is slowly retired) makes sense.

Well, they do need custom settings for games that need to mount CD drives and such.
Also for some games the cycles have to be adapted to prevent unexpected behaviour. Dark Forces for example has some movement/collision detection problems in the ice level when the cycles are set to Auto or very high.

I think they did it because it's the simpliest and most versatile solution. Like all the games that get shipped with other emulators by now the customer does not have to think about installing the emulator (like you said) and it gives them the chance to adapt the configuration for each game.

But it also makes it a PITA if someone needs to change settings like the overlay mode, he has to do it in each game's configuration file.

Maybe. I've seen exactly one instance of a game not working in Windows 7 that i wanted to play because of some Windows API change, and that's it. Guess that says the state of newer games and how much they don't interest me.

Food for thought. Amazon shuts down smart-house because they thought he said a racial slur, and as most of the man's house was integrated with Amazon's smart devices...

Just be careful what you wish for, and what you're willing to give up.

I've redacted the link in the quote because I trust Breitbart as far as I can throw their webservers, but I was wondering if you could provide a source from say, BleepingComputer or other sites that shall I say are less, slanted and red toned.