I have DI & D2. I play them through a DOS Box on a Dell Laptop running Win XP. I have an occasional minor issue but play is 95% trouble free.

I've tried to play D3 but I get horizontal bars that block a large portion of the screen. I've tried different resolution settings but that doesn't seem to correct the issue. Got any suggestions???

What are your system specs? Are you using OpenGL or Direct 3D? What resolution is your monitor set at and what resolution is the game set at? Have you updated Direct X and your video/sound drivers? Is Vsynch on or off? Have you run setup in the D3 Launcher?

Old games like that sometimes worked by filling one horizontal strip of the screen at a time, until they all were filled.

First try this thread, it has a similar problem and they found a solution:
[url=]http://www.gog.com/en/forum/descent_series/descent_3_resolution_problem_black_bars[/url]

On D3, the only graphics API that should still do that is 3dfx Glide, however today that isn't available on modern cards, unless you have a very very old voodoo card from the time the game was out itself.

Try switching between OpenGL and DirectX, and see if either one solves the problem. Alternatively, it is possible to emulate glide as well, and see if glide works. nGlide is what I use to play D3 [url=]http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide[/url].