I have found quite a few games I want to buy and download from GoG.com, but those games require DosBox - I dont know enough about DosBox to make a decision about whether to buy the games or not. I'm just afraid of viruses, my computer crashing, things that will harm my computer, etc. Anyone's thoughts?

Dosbox doesn't do crap to your computer.

Yes, it is . DosBox does nothing to your PC . Buy in good faith, I have over 200 games on GOG, never had a problem.

It's vice versa - dosbox is more safe than plain game. Because it's kind of virtual machine, it's isolate the programs launched within it from your real operation system.

The only infection DosBox will give you is a fever for more old-school gaming nostalgia. :)

(Yes it's safe.)

I'm not tech-savvy myself, but DOSBox is absolutely safe. In fact, every game or patch you download from GOG, whether using ScummVM, DOSBox or whatever, is 100% virus-free and guaranteed to run on almost every modern OS and machine.

You don't even need to download DOSBox, the games come with it and they do everything automatically, which for those -- such as myself -- who don't understand much about modding and meddling with the tech side of things, and have no interest in it, is very welcomed and appreciated. I just download the games and they run, easy as that.

Your anti-virus software might "detect a threat", but whenever that happens it's just a false positive, GOG wouldn't be where they are today if they sold faulty or virulent products. I can assure GOG is trustworthy, DOSBox is just an MS-DOS emulator to make old games run on modern systems.

It's not safe by any means. DOSBox will enable you to play games that you want to play, taking time away from more useful tasks such as eating and washing your car.

DO NOT be tempted to install DOSBox. Remain productive.

DosBox isn't bad for your computer......WE ARE! :P

So bad you're good? :P

None of those things happen with Dosbox. It's an emulator, meaning everything that runs inside of it cannot run outside of it. That's the idea anyway, that without Dosbox you cannot run any of it at all. So you're completely safe.

The worst that can happen is that the program crashes...just like anything else in Windows. So ease your worries and enjoy your games. :)

Since when does emulator do harm to your pc?

Dosbox doesn't kill programs, people do. ;)

Hey everyone, thanks for the heads up! My fears are alleviated. How does DosBox work? I mean, how do I play a game with it? A friend of mine showed me Dosbox, but he has it set up that all I have to do to load a game is click on the game’s shortcut on my desktop. It took me straight to the game. Very simple, but I don’t know how he got DosBox and thegames configured that way. Any thoughts?

Gog takes care of all the configuration part. You install the game and launch it as you would for any other game. It's 99.99% hassle-free. :)

As safe as it is to use your word pad on it or mspaint...