MS-DOS Protected mode in VMWare 4

[svet-am]

Subject pretty much sums things up. I'm running MS-DOS 6.22 inside a VMWare 4 virtual machine.

I get various errors when trying to load EMM386.EXE. All I really want to do is run old MS-DOS games, but have had absolutely no success.

I can get all of my TSRs running, except EMM386. Video, mouse, and sound all work as they should, but without EMM386, games can load their own memory managers and the like.

I'm starting to think that this is some sort of VMWare limitated, but thought I'd ask here to get any other feedback first.

 

[lopoetve]

Did you remember to run it in config.sys?

Did you remember to run himem.sys?

What flags are you trying to use?

What OS behind VMware?

 

[Nazo]

First, EMM386 IS a memory manager, so if you have it loaded, then the problem lies not in games that have their own memory managers, but those that don't. The ones that do typically require that you disable EMM386 for this very reason.

Also, it isn't supposed to matter what OS you run VMWare in. This is the whole POINT of VMWare and if it does matter they've messed up.

Anyway, I'm wondering about the memory settings. Also, in that config.sys, you remembered to load HIMEM.SYS before EMM386.EXE, right? And what are the settings you used for EMM386.EXE? I do wonder if the problem is a lot more complex than this, but you have to start from the basics.

EDIT: In fact, just quote your config.sys file in here or something, then try to give us the specific error messages that you get. That would probably help narrow the problem down a good bit.

EDIT2: Oh, and you might try QEMM386.EXE instead of EMM386.EXE. People used to do this a lot back in the good old dos days due to EMM386's problems (probably this includes the fact it will limit your available memory to no more than 32MB...) Plus QEMM386 was smaller. Of course, there are occassional incompatibilities with some games/programs when using QEMM (and, in fact, a few with the other way around.)

 

[lopoetve]

Originally posted by Nazo
First, EMM386 IS a memory manager, so if you have it loaded, then the problem lies not in games that have their own memory managers, but those that don't. The ones that do typically require that you disable EMM386 for this very reason.

Also, it isn't supposed to matter what OS you run VMWare in. This is the whole POINT of VMWare and if it does matter they've messed up.

Anyway, I'm wondering about the memory settings. Also, in that config.sys, you remembered to load HIMEM.SYS before EMM386.EXE, right? And what are the settings you used for EMM386.EXE? I do wonder if the problem is a lot more complex than this, but you have to start from the basics.

EDIT: In fact, just quote your config.sys file in here or something, then try to give us the specific error messages that you get. That would probably help narrow the problem down a good bit.

EDIT2: Oh, and you might try QEMM386.EXE instead of EMM386.EXE. People used to do this a lot back in the good old dos days due to EMM386's problems (probably this includes the fact it will limit your available memory to no more than 32MB...) Plus QEMM386 was smaller. Of course, there are occassional incompatibilities with some games/programs when using QEMM (and, in fact, a few with the other way around.)

I know it isn't SUPPOSED to matter, but it can. It is always nice to know.

And I've had more problems with qemm386 than I ever did with EMM386, but that's me.