DOSBOX Help

[dgdgagdae]

Pardon me, I read the post incorrectly.

Here, I downloaded dosbox just now again and read the couple of Q/As at the beginning and here's the scoop....I don't know if you've read and already tried all this stuff, but just bringing it to your attention if you have not:

Q: I can't type \ or : in DOSBox.
A: This is a known problem. It only occurs if your keyboard layout isn't US.
Some possible fixes:
1. Switch the keyboard layout of your operating system.
2. Use / instead.
3. Open dosbox.conf and change usescancodes=false to usescancodes=true.
4. Add the commands you want to execute to the "configfile".
5. Change the dos keyboard layout (see Section 7 Keyboard Layout).
6. Use ALT-58 for : and ALT-92 for \.
7. for \ try the keys around "enter". For ":" try shift and the keys
between "enter" and "l" (US keyboard layout).
8. Try keyb.com from FreeDOS (http://projects.freedos.net/keyb/).
Look for keyb2.0 pre4 as older and newer versions are known to
have a bug in the loader routines.

Wow, thanks for looking at all of that, but I've already tried. It's not just that I can't type a backslash. When I do, it puts out "]" instead. Typing "]" gives me "[", and typing "[" gives me nothing. I also get nothing from "'" (that's a single quote), and "=". These keys act the same way shifted or unshifted.

I can use the forward slash at the DOSbox prompt, but that of course doesn't work inside of applications as a backslash.

I've tried the other steps, including messing around with keyb.com. It was hard to find (the link provided in the DOSBox FAQ didn't work), and I wasn't having any success with it.

I'll try the recommended steps later for booting into safe mode and the live Linux suggestion. I'd never heard of "live Linux", but a quick Google turns up a bootable distro that includes DOSBox.

I do have one of those HP multimedia keyboards. I killed the task "keyb.exe" that monitors those extra multimedia keys, but that also didn't help.

On the plus side - I was actually able to get Wing Commander running. I used the forward slash to mount to the directory where I wanted to install, so I didn't have to use the backslash in the installer. And those keys don't seem to be required in the game. And - even 17 years later, the game is just as fun as I remembered.

Thanks for everyone's attempt at help, I am going to keep trying. I expect I'll need those keys later on down the line.

[Trebuken]

VMWare or VirtualPC might help.