DosBox Help (running 3D Lemmings off the CD in DOSBox on Windows 10)

[Nessy]

I found my old 3D Lemmings CD today and I tried to get it up and running using DOSBox on Windows 10 (or is Windows 10 way too far ahead that there's just no hope of running 3D Lemmings using DosBox?), but I'm having some trouble. I'm mounting everything correctly and I keep getting stuck on:

MSCDEX Version 2.23 detected
CD-ROM drive – D: utilized
Please insert 3D Lemmings CD in drive and close door

I've searched the web for help but came up with nothing.

I appreciate any help with this. Thank you very much.

[Flopsy]

Are you not able to run 3D Lemmings using Windows compatibility mode? I'm sure you've probably tried this already otherwise you wouldn't be using DosBox.

You right click an application in Windows 10 and click "Troubleshoot Compatibility"

Personally Windows 95 tends to be very far back for Windows 10 to be able to run these programs properly but there are some cases where Win 95 applications do still work fine.

I played some old midi tracks from Lemmings Paintball using Windows 10 media and it sounded horrible due to the midi sound assignments.

[Simon]

I have run L3D in DOSBox, but always without the CD.

In DOSBox, the game runs entirely from harddrive*, including lower-quality music. If you want the high-quality soundtrack, L3D requires the CD, then reads the high-quality music from the CD during play.

To disable the CD soundtrack: Inside DOSBox, run the game's SETUP.EXE, choose Setup Hardware,  choose Sound, and set CD Music to off.

*) I don't remember how I arrived at the harddrive installation. I believe you can, outside of DOSBox, copy all files from the CD into a new directory. In DOSBox, mount that directory or a parent, cd into that directory, and then run SETUP.EXE and L3D.EXE within.

I'm mounting everything correctly

If you still can't run L3D or really want the CD music, maybe describe exactly these correct steps. But I loosely remember getting stuck like you 10 years ago, and settling for no CD.

-- Simon

[Nessy]

Thanks for the replies.

Unfortunately I tried compatibility mode one more time but nothing. Thanks for your help anyway.

I did originally try running it off CD by placing the contents of 3D Lemmings in a subfolder called l3d:

Z:\> Mount C C:/dosgames
Z:\> C:
C:\> cd l3d
C:\> L3D.exe

But this gave me:

MSCDEX driver not found

Which lead me to try playing off the CD with no luck either.

[ccexplore]

(removed my original post, or at least most of it)

Based on your first post, it seems like you did mount everything correctly.  It almost seems like the game somehow refuses to recognize your CD as valid.  I don't remember if L3D does any sort of copy protection. (Not to say the CD isn't genuine or anything, but maybe that the copy protection, if any, doesn't really work inside DOSBox's emulation.)

Did you try Simon's suggestion?  Specifically if the CD has a SETUP.EXE file, you should run that instead at some point and see what happens, either before or after copying all files to hard disk.  If SETUP.EXE runs, you may also want to try Simon's suggestion of turning off CD music with a hard disk install, and see if that will make the game stop complaining about the CD.

Finaly, you could still refer back to the DOSBox readme to see the different mount options related to CD-ROM drive, and try them out to see if any of them might help.  Though I feel like probably not, since based on the output messages it produced, it seems like the game is only looking for MSCDEX driver and did find it, so it would seem that the CD drive is correctly mounted in DOSBox.

[ccexplore]

Google shows a site that covers the different DOSBox mounting options for CD drive, although I still think the standard -t cdrom option should suffice.

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Utilities/Emulators/DOSBox/DOSBoxGuide-Mount.html#cd

I was also going to say to check and make sure you used the right drive letter (maybe CD drive isn't D on your computer?), but then since you could run the game EXE from the CD in DOSBox (just that the game then doesn't seem to recognize the CD), I guess that can't be it.  If the wrong drive letter was used there wouldn't even be an L3D.EXE file in DOSBox for you to run.

Other things you can try is to make sure the CD is already in the drive before even running DOSBox.  Or, at the point where the game asks for CD, maybe actually eject and re-insert the CD back into the drive and see if that helps.  Probably not but might as well try.

In worst case, I think sites like abandonia.com will have cracked or similar versions of Lemmings 3D that hopefully will work better in DOSBox and may not require any CDs at all.

[Nessy]

Thanks ccexplore. I'll try your suggestions and Simon's suggestions again later on today.

Thank you everybody for the help!

[namida]

If all else fails, one other option is to grab a version from another platform and the appropriate emulator (a PS1 version exists, and I believe there's one more too). You could also look into using virtual machine software to set up a virtual DOS or Windows 95 machine.

Are you not able to run 3D Lemmings using Windows compatibility mode? I'm sure you've probably tried this already otherwise you wouldn't be using DosBox.

3D Lemmings is a DOS game, not an older-versions-of-Windows one. 64-bit versions of Windows can't run DOS programs at all (except via DOSBox or a VM), and even 32-bit versions of Windows from as far back as Windows 2000 often don't run them very well regardless of compatibility settings (in particular, they'll often lack sound).

[ccexplore]

I haven't tested Windows 10 yet but it still works on Windows 7 for sure.  I just installed DOSBox version 0.74 (the latest version available) and without changing any settings I could get it to work with the CD I have.  I ran the following commands in this order:

mount c c:\  [you could try changing it to a subdirectory under c:\ instead of c:\ itself, it shouldn't matter]
mount d d:\ -t cdrom
d:
setup
l3d

The third step switches to the CD-ROM drive, otherwise it can't seem to find the files it need (but I still don't get your particular error, I got an error that talks about not finding a very specific file).  The fourth step is optional but recommended, otherwise you start off with no sound no music.  Running setup allows you to turn all that on.  You only need to do that first time around, you should be able to skip it in subsequent launches.  The final command of course actually runs the game.

For best performance you should consider pressing Ctrl+F12 to bump up the DOSBox cycles count to something like 20000 or above.  The default of 3000 may be too slow for this game.

It seems DOSBox won't even let you mount the CD-ROM drive (with the -t cdrom option) if there is no actual CD in it.  At least for me, if I try with an empty drive, DOSBox will pop an error (as a separate window) and force you to either insert the CD to continue or cancel.  With that in mind, I would not recommend trying to eject and re-insert the CD after mounting like I mentioned earlier.  Just start with the CD inserted before you even run DOSBox and leave it there.

[Nessy]

mount c c:\  [you could try changing it to a subdirectory under c:\ instead of c:\ itself, it shouldn't matter]
mount d d:\ -t cdrom
d:
setup
l3d

This worked!

I guess the problem was that I had to mount both the C drive and my D (disk) drive, while in my previous attempts I would only mount one or the other. That was the only thing I did different in this last attempt.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to help me out. I appreciate it.