🚀 go-pugleaf

Greg Keogh wrote:
> 
> Hello from Melbourne Australia,
> 
> It seems that installing Microsoft Directx 3 drivers on Windows 95 "upsets"
> how existing games will play in DOS mode. Helpful comments upon this
> technical mystery are most welcome. Details follow:
> 
> We've previously had no problems at all running many popular games such as
> Wing Commander and Silent Hunter under Win95. These games would simply go
> into a DOS full-screen window and run perfectly.
> 
> A few days ago we installed the flight-sim game 'USNF 97', during the
> installation it detected that the Microsoft Directx 3 drivers were not
> installed and asked us to confirm their installation, which we did. The
> installation ran smoothly, and the 'USNF 97' game then ran beautifully.
> 
> Later we discovered that running the previously installed and working games
> caused Win95 to issue the prompt:
> 
>    Program Requires MS-DOS Mode
> 
> We are then prompted to restarted the PC in DOS mode. After much
> experimentation we found that existing games would only run in MS-DOS mode
> with a new DOS configuration that manually loads all the CD-ROM and mouse
> drivers. The games will run, but it's very tedious to set-up this
> configuration for all of the existing games and restart the PC each time we
> want to play a game.
> 
> We are absolutely certain that the change was caused by installing
> Microsoft Directx 3 drivers. How has Directx 3 changed the way the
> previously working DOS games run? Help and advice most welcome.
> 
> Please cc responses to my personal email address so I get them ASAP.

I've been running Silent Hunter and other DOS games while having DirectX
version 3 (DX3) loaded for a very long time.  I've had this installation
on three seperate computers and never this problem. My guess is that
you're MSDOS pif needs to have a little tweaking done to it.  I would
recommend setting all memory options to AUTO and check the box on the
ADVANCED page that prevents DOS programs form detecting windows.

I hope that helps.

Jim 'Crazy' De Vico
Warbirds Trainer
-=Black Sheep=- Alpha Wing