Run Old Games In DOSBox Without Mounting Drives

Tired of mounting drives in DOSBox every time you want to run an old game on a modern Windows machine? With a little trick you can play your game without wasting time mounting drives.

We will install Dangerous Dave, but you can choose any DOS game of your choice.

What is DOSBox?

DOSBox is an emulator that helps with running old DOS games on a new Windows machine. It emulates the MS-DOS environment on newer versions of Windows and thus eliminates the various incompatibilities that arise from trying to run old games.

Is there any old game which you wanted to play, but your OS won’t allow it? If your answer is yes, then give DOSBox a try. You will be able to play your game without any hassles.

The image below shows what you get when trying to run Dangerous Dave without DOSBox.

Install DOSBox

Download the program and install it. We’ll need a DOSBox shortcut on the desktop, so do that now.

Install Dangerous Dave

Grab yourself a copy of the game and extract the zip file using any archive manager. That will give you two files – DAVE.EXE and EGADAVE.DAV

Copy the Dave folder to a desired location on your hard drive and remember its exact location. Your location should be something like “C:\dave\dave.exe”. Copy this location, but make sure that you do not take out the “double quotes”.

Run Dave & DOSBox Simultaneously

Go to the desktop and right click on the DOSBox icon. In the target field, place your cursor after the last double quote and hit space. Then paste your game location. Now the target box should look something like this “C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe” “C:\dave\dave.exe”

Hit Apply and then OK.

When you now double click your desktop shortcut, the game should start. If your game doesn’t start in full screen mode, press ALT + Enter.

More Games

DOS Games Archive is a site dedicated to DOS games. It currently boasts more than 250 games (276 to be exact). I personally like Skyroads because that was the game I used to play 12 years ago (it’s difficult too). You will find many other great and interesting games here and we have previously reviewed other websites to find DOS games.

Only games, no applications?

DOSBox is not only for games, it can also run other applications like Turbo C++. And for a programmer who works in Turbo C++, mounting drives every time is a pain. You can save yourself some time by following the process outlined above.

Conclusion

So that was a quick tip on how to get an old game running without having to type the path every time in DOSBox. If you know any other methods to achieve this, share with us in the comments below!