Hi!

I'd like to play an old DOS game. According to all internet sourcesm the game in question should run w/o any problems.

When I run the game, it tells me that I have not enough EMS memory. I configured the shortcut to make EMS available. When I use mem /c I get something like this:

    655360 bytes total conventional memory
    655360 bytes available to MS-DOS
    633872 largest executable program size

   1048576 bytes total contiguous extended memory
         0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
    941056 bytes available XMS memory
           MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

As you can see, I have lots of extended memory, but 0 bytes of it are available... changing the settings only allows me to alter the "total" memory, not the available memory.

In the config.nt file for the game I've the EMM=RAM line. And now, I'm stuck. I've no idea what I could do...
Any kind of help would really be appreciated.

The game works correctly from the DOS prompt if you don't boot Windows XP?
(Just making sure the game actually works ok!)

Well, dosbox... I'll try to get it to work in dosbox again, but my first try suggested that it was slow as hell and after some time I simply got a black screen - nothing happened anymore.

The game should work ok, I just installed it from the original CDs.
Right now, my main problem is simply that I can't get XP to make some of the EMS memory actually available... it's there, just not available

Um. yep. I know those links. I tried to google for help for days now

Post your config.sys or config.nt, especially the line containing the emm386 thingy.

EDIT:

Go to %windir% and edit the Memory properties of _default.lnk?

In the shortcut, are you specifically telling XP you only have one meg of extended memory? Or is that just what you get automatically?

Edit:

Nevermind, this is the default behavior for XP.

Edit2:

I've set up a standard shortcut to command.com, specified Win95 compatibility, 640kb base memory, and the maximum amount of EMS and XMS (16mb each). I run the shortcut, checked my memory, and everything was groovy. I then fired up Day of the Tentacle, and it ran fine (although without sound).

Thanks. That's what I've done. as you can see in my first post, I do have EMS. The problem is, that none of that memory is available.
Regarding the exe / shell thing:
I changed the settings both for my shortcut for command.com and the exe in question. It doesn't change a thing.

At first, I only tried the startrek.exe settings. Since this didn't give me many debug options, I also configured a command.com with the same settings, including the same config.nt and autoexec.nt files.

Um no.
Both my command.com shortcut and my startrek.exe shortcut use the maximum possible ems that the properties/memory setting allow me to set. It just doesn't change a thing - no ems available.

The funny thing is, that the described steps above seem to solve the problem on pretty much 90% of the computers, and the other 10% seem to have the problem I'm encountering.

25th anniversary is supposed to run "out-of-the-box" in XP - the problem is, it doesn't work at all on my puter.

VDMSound should help!
It does not only enable DOS sound drivers for your XP dos box, it features also advanced memory settings. Maybe you can configure EMS in your VDMSound setup.

Thanks. I knew that. But, please believe me, when I tell you that the program doesn't run with the message that it needs at least 1meg of EMS.

I'll try VDMSound, thanks for the link