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Simply send me a PM with your problem and I'll gladly help you thru it.

The DOSBox version of STARS! found in the download pages of the STARS! Wiki should be pretty straightforward. It is probably only a small problem.

Edit: Okay, I looked at the file and it won't be as straightforward as I thought.

I actually have a fair deal of experience with troubleshooting... I'm going to try to be as thorough as possible without really knowing the extent of your computer knowledge so simply take what you need from the long text which is going to follow.

First thing first, Gible didn't supply the DOSBox version he was working on when he bundled the file. You will need to get the latest version of DOSBox here if you haven't done so already.

Unpack/install DOSBox 0.74 as normal and open a directory there. Then unpack the content of DosboxStars.rar where ever you want. Once the .rar is unpacked, copy the directory of DosBoxC to your c:\ drive.

At this point some file editing is needed. Run the "Dosbox 0.74 Options.bat" file which you will be able to easily spot in the Dosbox 0.74 folder: it will prompt you with the configuration file of Dosbox 0.74. Go at the very bottom of this file until you see:

Quote:

[autoexec] # Lines in this section will be run at startup.

This is where we'll copy/paste the relevant data.

Next in line is opening the configuration file supplied by Gible. There will be no batch file to niftily open your text file this time so you'll have to do it yourself. Keeping the Dosbox configuration file open, open a new directory in c:\DosboxC and find the file named "Dosbox.conf". It is possible you cannot see extention of files (which is a retarded stupidity of Windows which you can change in the folder options...) which mean that you might only see a strange file named "Dosbox". It is also very likely that Windows does not know how to open this file, which mean you will need to manually tell it to open it with any of your most basic file editing program. I usually use Notepad.exe on my Win XP machine but WordPad or whatever more recent file edition tool should do just as well.

You will find in this new text file another DOSBox configuration file... However this one belongs to an older version of DOSBox and won't work with 0.74. At the very least, I don't recommend you use it. What we'll do instead is browse the file to the end again and go look at what Gibble inserted in his autoexec file. It should be:

Quote:

mount c c:\dosboxc c: windows\win /n c:\stars\stars.exe -x exit

If case you are wondering and interested, the mount command is what tell DOSBox what is where when it starts, the C: jumps you from the DOSBox Z:\ starting drive to whatever you have mounted, the third long line is the command line to actually start STARS! in DOSBox and the exit command will niftily close DOSBox once you close Windows 3.11.

All you have to do is copy those four lines and insert them in your Dosbox 0.74 configuration file under the [autoexec] title and save the file.

Voilà! Assuming you did everything well, the next time you start Dosbox 0.74 you should be running Windows 3.11 in turn running STARS! 2.60J prompting you for your serial key. Enjoy!

If you run into any kind of trouble simply send me a PM or reply here.

[Updated on: Thu, 05 January 2012 10:11]

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Thanks Gible for this workaround. I was trying to see the game screens after 7 years! Desperately wanted to install on my Windows 7 Home edition 64-bit.

The dosbox trick worked!

Now on my other computer, should I install the same version of stars or can I go for 2.7.

[Updated on: Tue, 28 February 2012 03:32]

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[Updated on: Tue, 28 February 2012 07:58]

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