Hey all, I downloaded a few games off Abandonia earlier but I seem to be having a problem getting them to play. Back when I was using XP I remember that I could just click on an exe file and it would open in DOSbox to install and what not. When I click on an Exe it brings up a message telling me that that the file isn't compatible with my version of windows. I’m a bit confused as to how exactly I’m supposed to play the game. By the way, my free copy of Ultima 4 from GOG still works fine just by clicking on the icon. Any help would be much appreciated. I'm running Windows 7 home premium 64 bit

Ah, I think you might be getting confused between the emulator DOSBox and the DOS support that remained in Windows XP. If you were just double clicking DOS programs to run them, that almost certainly wasn't DOSBox.

DOS programs are 16-bit and since you're on 64-bit Windows, 16-bit programs won't run natively at all. The reason Ultima 4 works is because it's using DOSBox (the emulator).

Head over to http://www.dosbox.com and grab the latest version and give that a go. If you get stuck, grab my attention by quoting this post (with the reply button).

There are multiple versions of DOSBox that you can download, there's probably an older or newer version that will work better. As to getting the game to run, I've read that the usual process means running the program, then treating it like an old Dos era interface, programming in files and saving space for your content. Well..... that option kicked my butt. Turns out though that you can click and drag the .exe icon from the desktop onto the Dosbox icon and it will mount itself automatically. I did this with a copy of Monkey Island a couple years ago, but I don't know if it works for everything.

As far as I can tell he's not using DOSBox at all, I think when he's referring to DOSBox he means the old DOS windows you get in earlier versions of Windows.

I tried draging the EXE onto the icon, it told me it was an illegal command. No, I AM running Dosbox. I'm trying to get it to work haha Perhaps I didn't word myself properly. I had DOSbox installed on XP and it would work by just clicking on the executable file in the game folder. I don't remember what else might have been done to make it work diffrently as I didn't install it myself. Now I'm running windows 7 and it's not working the same way. I would assume I have to actually go into DOSbox and configure it manually or something like that I just need help doing that. Sorry if I'm just being confusing haha

BTW I'm running the latest version of DOSbox

Apologies for assuming wrong, you deserve more credit than I gave you.

However, DOSBox doesn't just run when you double click the DOS game unless you have a fancy addon for it (I'm not saying one that does that exists necessarily, just that DOSBox can't do that on it's own).

So either you had more than just DOSBox installed on your old computer, or you had DOSBox installed but weren't actually making use of it and just running the games using XP's own DOS support.

The normal way to use DOSBox is to run DOSBox itself and then mount the folder the game is in. You can automate some things by adding them to the autoexec section of the configuration file, this is the way GOGs that run on DOSBox work. You might find it easier to get a frontend like Dfend Reloaded though.

Well I have a bit of a bigger problem now, I just accidently set DOSbox as the default program to open EXE files and I can''t figure out how to fix it. Obviously this means I'm pretty screwed now haha Is there anyway you could help me out? God I feel like an idiot for that one. I thought it would be for just that single EXE not all of them!

Oh crap, that is quite a problem. I'm not sure how to tackle that one!

The third link on this page might do the trick.

Thank you so much! You saved my computer haha Now if only someone could tell me how to use DOSbox XD

Thanks! This is great!

*cough cough*

DBGL is superior to DFend.

Opps! Thanks to you as well, I guess I didn't see that. Thanks to every one for their help.