Hey all, first off sorry if this has already been asked but I couldn't find anything.

Anyways when I start the gog version of Heroes of Might and Magic 2 through dosbox the first screen that comes up is one that tells me that there is no cd in the drive, specifically it mentions the expansion cd but I don't know if that is important, and that I will only be able to play as a guest in the multiplayer. Obviously this is a bit of a hurdle and I was hoping to find some advice on how to fix this and get to the campaign.

Also I start the game by mounting the drive manually and starting it in the dosbox program itself as the game will just crash when I use the standard executable from gog.

Currently running windows 8

Thank you all for your help.

Are you perhaps using an old installer? Could you try downloading the latest version if so.

Unfourtunately I am using the installer I just downloaded this morning.

Maybe the CD is not being mounted properly.

Try this:

Open dosboxhomm2.conf and at the very bottom, where it said

imgmount d ".\homm2.inst" -t iso -fs iso
c:

change to

c:
imgmount d ".\HOMM2~1.INS" -t iso -fs iso

(or browse through the folder making sure the file HOMM2~1.INS exists)

Okay tried this and there was no difference. I changed the lines in the "client", "single", "editor", and "server" config files, there was no such line in the main configuration file. Additionally in the filles there were two periods rather than one before the backslash, I don't know if that makes a difference or not and I did not reduce them down to one period.

There was the HOMM2~1.INS file when viewed through dosbox. in my windows browser the same file is displayed as "homm2.isnt"

Again thanks for taking the time to help me out with this.

yes, this makes the difference

. means that the file HOMM2~1.INS should be in the same folder
.. means that the file HOMM2~1.IN should be one level lower.

So if the file HOMM2~1.INS is in the same folder as Dosbox.exe you should change .. to .
(I'm not sure how it is in the gog version, since I only have it on CD).

Kay I did change the periods and there was still no difference, still getting the message about needing a disk. That said in the my files the INS file is in a directory higher than the imbedded dosbox executable which is one level lower. I am not using the embedded launcher but a manual mount through my own dosbox installation. When I use the gog launcher, just double clicking on the HOMM2 icon on my desktop, the dosbox application crashes before anything else. That is why I started using my own dosbox to launch the game.

Additionally (and this may be why the embedded dosbox crashes come to think of it) I have to do a workaround before opening dosbox each time to get it to read my keystrokes. As found in section 2 of the DOSBOX v0.74 manual file:

KEYBOARD: Right Shift and "\" doesn't work in DOSBox. (Windows only)
This may happen if Windows thinks that you have more than one keyboard
connected to your PC when you use some remote control devices.
To verity this problem run cmd.exe, navigate to DOSBox program folder
and type:
set sdl_videodriver=windib
dosbox.exe
check whether keyboard started to work properly.

Not sure if this factors into things but I have no firm idea of what is causing this.

OK, putting aside for the moment why the shortcut is crashing, when you mount HOMM2~1.INS manually does it mount properly?


so after you mount:
imgmount d "<full path here>\HOMM2~1.INS" -t iso -fs iso

You should type
d:

and then
dir

That should display all files on "CD". Does that work?

Yes the image mounted and displays a directory.

After going into the subdirectory to reach the executable I activate it and receive a brief start up I get a message that a data file can't be opened.

See attached image

YES!!!

Running it from the installation folder after mounting the image worked. Thank you and have a great night you beautiful creature.

Glad it worked.

You might still want to contact support on why their shortcuts are crashing. You shouldn't have to do the mounting and running manually.