I can't get Doom Alpha 2 to run, can anybody help?

I have WinXP and whenever I try to run it, my dos window pops up, all black, then it disappears and I'm back at my file again. All other Alpha and Beta Doom's run just fine. Can anybody help?

I seem to remember one of these alphas self-terminating after a certain date, so it needs to be patched before it will work. That's my guess.

0.2 and the Press Release Demo will not work in XP, but 0.4 and 0.5 will. If you want 0.2 and the PR to run in XP, run them in DOSbox.

Actually, the press release version does work, i am only having trouble with 0.2 Also, I tried Dosbox and it doesn't seem to want to load in there either.

I've been able to run all of the alphas and the press release under XP by booting in safe mode with the command line and running them from there.

If I ran some of the earlier DOOM alphas on my 486 and then typed "win" to start up Win95 afterward, Windows would frequently fail to start up, indicating that DOS had been corrupted. Some of the earlier alphas are not running in protected mode I guess and can mess up the system, so it's hardly surprising that they don't want to run under Windows.

These are quite glitchy, in my opinion. I have frozen on all of them, but safe mode usually works for me. On my old 486, i had SO much trouble. I think theirs one that needs a file to confuse the comp so it thinks the date is somewhere before october 31 1993...oh well. You should restart, put up safe mode, and check your comp for viruses. Otherwise, find a loophole. work around it by starting programs and then starting doom alpha.

The 0.2 alpha has its own operating sub-system and is rejected by XP. DOSBox also rejects it because DOSBox is it's own sub-system. BGeHK and find a way to do it (safe mode shuts down subsytem checks, because it's one of those windows frills that can cause a problem sometimes).

I tried running it under safe mode, it didn't work. If I try to run it with the command prompt, it opens, sort of, but it's messed up and I can't do anything. I get these weird red lines on the screen and another weird object that I think says DOOM but it's hard to tell and you can see the command prompt cursor flashing in the background, sort of "behind" the game plus you can type on the command prompt and see movement from the command prompt, it's really weird. I dunno why. Any other suggestions?

check your resolution, graphics card, and monitor. I think this is an internal problem, resulting because of the incombatibility of the alpha doom. Check those things, and try it again.

I don't think it's my computer, it's a brand new Dell Dimension 3000. My resolution is 800 by 600, graphics card is an Intel Extreme Graphics 2, and my monitor is a Dell 15" LCD flat panel. Everything is working fine.

I said:

The 0.2 alpha has its own operating sub-system and is rejected by XP. DOSBox also rejects it because DOSBox is it's own sub-system. BGeHK and find a way to do it (safe mode shuts down subsytem checks, because it's one of those windows frills that can cause a problem sometimes).

That glich occured because it's subsystem didn't load (DOS-ish was running the program and it couldn't load right) The no start in safe mode is attributed to hardware, specifically your processor or RAM, as Windows uses a generic driver for video, sound (if there is any), and the like.

Quite an interesting problem. I assume you checked your DOS compatibility. If not, do so and get DOS. Otherwise, I'm stumped.

EDIT: POST 250! FREAKIN' SWEET!

Oh I forgot, and the above reminded me, try using the setver command if you know how and bump it back to 5.0 (DOS version). That might help.

HobbsTiger1 said:

The 0.2 alpha has its own operating sub-system and is rejected by XP. DOSBox also rejects it because DOSBox is it's own sub-system. BGeHK and find a way to do it (safe mode shuts down subsytem checks, because it's one of those windows frills that can cause a problem sometimes).

It isn't anything to do with them "having their own subsystems". Doom 0.2 is simply buggy. My guess is that there is some strange quirk of real DOS which means the problem doesn't occur, whereas under DOSBox or Windows, it does.

Even under real DOS, Doom 0.2 crashes after a while.

HobbsTiger1 said:

Oh I forgot, and the above reminded me, try using the setver command if you know how and bump it back to 5.0 (DOS version). That might help.

This won't be any help - the setver command simply changes the DOS version that is reported to a program (some programs check for "DOS 3" for example, and won't run on later versions). Doom doesn't do any DOS version checks to my knowledge.

Though it doesn't seem to run on Windows XP, I know I was able to start it back when I used Windows 2000. Which is really weird.