Has anyone else experienced random crashes to desktop?
They happen every now and then, there's no error message. The screen turns black for a second and after that, I'm back to the desktop. A residual DosBox window remains on screen for a couple more of seconds before closing too.
It always happens during races, usually when I'm close to finishing it.

It could be a memory problem... for starters, try to start the game in lores mode, where it consumes less memory (we can tweak your settings lateron to get the hires version to work should this be the problem, for now we just want to test):
Open the dosboxScreamer.conf file from your Screamer directory in notepad. Search for "starth.exe" (near the bottom) and replace it with "startl.exe". Then launch the game as usual.

Also is this on any map or a certain one is particular? Screamer has always had stability problems on SVGA mode no matter what system you run it on, something about memory overflow I think. You can also try changing the sound options to lower quality or off, music should be ok to keep on though.
Another tip if it is SVGA mode that is causing you problems on a specific map and you want to keep high resolution cars is to go into your SCREAMER/GFX directory and backup MAPXH, where X is the map number. Replace it with MAPXL, you will need to rename it to MAPXH in order for it to work. GOG have already done this with the sunbeach hill map I think :)

My system is good enough to run Unreal Engine 3 games on maximum.
I'm running Vista with 2 GB memory and a GeForce 8600GTS and a Core2Duo processor to be more specific.
The game crashes randomly at any given race, but I remember experiencing it so far in at least two races (Palm town and Lindburg), but I don't remember in whitch other races I crashed.
At least one crash happened during Lindburg time trials. Another happened in the first race I tried, after installing the game for the first time ever, in Palm Town. It crashed in the last lap.
Latsan, if you're right, then there's probably no other solution than sticking with the problem or reducing qualities.

Have you tryed all the basics like running it in compatibility mode, different colour settings, turning graphics card hardware acceleration off?

Ralackk: I haven't. But I guess raina's right. It's a problem from the game itself.
raina: I guess your right. If the problem becomes too much of a nuisance, then I'll begin messing with DosBox configurations and see what I get.
Thanks all of you guys for your efforts. :) They were really apreciated.

Well it never hurts to try the things I sugested, It would take all of about 10 minutes to test all the different options out. You would be suprised at what works when trying to get older games running.

I guess you're right. Maybe I'll try it when I have proper time. A shame the crash is so random or it would be very easy to spot what really works.

I also experience this and have been playing about with the different DOSBox graphic modes. They all seem to crash but DDraw didn't crash to desktop, just froze. I get the message
"DYNX86: Can't run code in this page"
Maybe this could help?
EDIT: Switching the render mode to "surface" (which is the default, AFAIK) seems to have stopped the crashing, at least for me. I couldn't finish the first longer race (i.e. laptimes over a minute) on D3D/DDraw/OGL

I've tried different graphic modes too.
None seemed more stable than other to me. In fact, in some of them, the game became extremely slow and full of graphical glitches.

I get the same crashing bug. I get this bug on a store bought version of screamer using the dosbox emulator as well. I though this version my have been fixed. It seems to be a dos4gw.exe error. I tried replacing it with a different version of dos4gw.exe and I still get the crash. My next step will be running it on a real 486 and see if it crashes as well.

Hey, mrdrilleraddict, thanks for sharing the info. I was under the impression that it was a problem with the original game and people here seemed to share that view.
Let us know if you get anything different from your 486 experience. :D

I have only one real problem with Screamer and that is when I load the game and the 'demo' starts, a few seconds into the demo, the game crashes.
So far, that's the only problem I've had.
Happens everytime.
EDIT: The above problem doesn't bother me at all since I don't exactly want to watch the demo, I want to play the game, however - I thought it worth mentioning.

I tested DOS32A in place of DOS4GW.EXE.
[url=http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/TOOLS:DOS32A]http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/TOOLS:DOS32A[/url]
Same clash occur.