The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    DOS games issues

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Dark Heart, Jul 25, 2008.

  1. Dark Heart

    Dark Heart Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    100
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    So I decided to play a few DOS games to pass the time and they start up perfectly; no error messages, no nothing. But, in all of them, the menus and the whole game are shifted either to the left of the screen, or to the right.

    And there is a graphical oddity along the top of the screen, where the screen is distorted.

    What is the cause of this and how do I fix it? I am reluctant to use an emulator, due to it being faster if I just double-click on the game.

    My sister's laptop has the same XP I do, installed from the same CD and the DOS games run perfectly there. And on my lalptop the CMD works perfectly in full-screen too.

    Unfortunately, I don't have any controls on my LCD to shift it so the menu is symmetrical, so I cannot use that to fix it.

    Does anyone know how to fix this?
     
  2. ravenmorpheus

    ravenmorpheus Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    26
    Messages:
    846
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    What video card has your sistes laptop got? What version drivers are you using?

    Check both of those, if she has the same video card then check the driver version she's running and try those drivers if they're not the ones you have.
     
  3. knightingmagic

    knightingmagic Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    144
    Messages:
    1,194
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Are you running them in XP like any other program?
     
  4. Dark Heart

    Dark Heart Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    100
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    My sister has nVidia, but which type I forgot. Yes, I just double click on the games to run them like any other program...

    Right now, I got MS-Virtual PC and installed DOS 7.10 on it. Most DOS games seem to work fine with it...
     
  5. Nir

    Nir Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    8
    Messages:
    41
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    i'm sorry to hear you are reluctent do use an Emulator , but you'll have to do it , XP doesnt run most DOS games as they should run , use DOSBOX , highly recommended.
     
  6. Dark Heart

    Dark Heart Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    100
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    But it's supposed to...I have ran DOS games on other XP machines for years now without any issue.
     
  7. Dark Heart

    Dark Heart Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    100
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Apparently alt-tabbing out of the games and then bringing it up again seems to work splendidly...I've tried it with "Amazon Snake" and I am gonna with all the others.