Command Prompt Portable 1.0 Pre-Release

Work fine with setting the path for me.

Nice nice choice of font! clean, easy to read! This is going to be very helpful for running on-start script, especially with netroid's PAM MOD's run apps on start feature.

Great launcher!

Not sure if you're implying you don't WANT it to show up there, but in Data\commandprompt.bat, the "cd\" command is what does this. You can change it to any directory or remove it to not switch directories on launch at all.

IE:

cd \portableapps

cd /d C:\Windows\system32

(The /d makes it switch the drive letter as well as the path; it's a compatibility hack from the old MS-DOS days. Back then you'd just type "C:" by itself to change to drive C:, and CD couldn't change the drive letter at all!)

I like PAM's design. Take something everyone knows and adapt it to the needs at hand. But still IMO PAM could use:
- Vista-style Start Menu, complete with a more traditional scrollbar, user-definable folders, and user-definable shortcuts. On a first run it could scan PortableApps for programs and generate the currently-seen list of programs, but then it's fair play for the user to add/remove and sort and categorize.
- Vista-type search thing to filter the PAM start menu. Everybody's doing it!
- Maybe you could take it further and hide the actual menu (optionally?) behind an "All Programs" button like Vista, and show a list of pinned and frequently used apps, just like Vista.

To summarize, I like the idea behind PAM, although I think John should take it all the way.

Some Dos files work fine as long as they are referenced from the drive root eg

Make a batch file like so named game.bat and save in /PortableApps/SomeDOSGame/
Put the game in /PortableApps/SomeDOSGame/App/

/PortableApps/SomeDOSGame/App/game.exe

Use AutoIT to compile a exe launcher like the script below

#include 
$rc = _RunDos("start /PortableApps/SomeDOSGame/game.bat")

I'll await the next release. Though I'll give the other suggestion a try too. It would still work when the update comes through since it seems to follow standard folder protocols anyways, right?
"... respect, all good works are not done by only good folk. For here, at the end of all things, we shall do what needs to be done."

Your best bet is emulation or virtualization. DOSBox is good, and portable, but slow. Virtual PC is the best choice IMO but it is not portable. I have found the other major free virtualization software to have problems with audio (VMWare's SB16 emulation crashes with LucasArts' iMuse in Dark Forces, VirtualBox doesn't even support anything iMuse can use).

QEMU works as well but it is only a smidgen faster than DOSBox, and just as hard to set up as Virtual PC etc. QEMU's Accelerator driver could theoretically speed games up, but I've found it doesn't work with DOS4GW (which powers many of the "good" DOS games, for example, Dark Forces).

Now why do I say don't bother running games right in Windows? Well first of all, if you have an nVidia card (maybe for ATI cards too, not sure if it's nVidia's fault or MS') and you're using Vista or considering upgrading, old games won't run at all, since NTVDM (Windows NT/2K/XP/Vista's built-in DOS emulation) can no longer run in fullscreen as it could under XP (you get an error which wrongly indicates your SYSTEM can't do 80x25 text mode!), and as anyone who's tried knows, no DOS graphical game will run in a window, Windows hasn't allowed that ever. So if you use Vista you're automatically going to have to turn to other software.

Secondly, and this is more important, even in XP running games won't work because NTVDM has almost non-existent support for sound and there are other little problems (IE Dark Forces again: the HUD flickers).

Third-party software can be used to restore sound. I have used VDMSound, which is partly portable, although only for NT/2K/XP. There once was a version for 98/ME but the download is no longer available. I have found the quality of VDMSound less than stellar at times, and it is no longer being updated. Plus you still have to put up with other NTVDM glitches (ie that HUD flicker I mentioned).

Here is an article I wrote which approaches this same topic from a "ok-so-how-do-I-do-it" POV: http://megazzt.googlepages.com/runningdarkforcesonxp

Wow what a coincidence, it focuses on my favorite DOS game. Although the techniques are the same for any DOS game.

PS: Although the above is mostly for NT/2K/XP/Vista, even in 95/98 and especially ME there can be problems getting DOS games running even though Windows is running on top of "real" DOS, probably because Windows still hogs all the hardware. In 9x you can use a shutdown option to restart into DOS (I think you can hold shift while clicking shutdown to make this option appear? Haven't used 9x in forever...) although ME doesn't support this. And I personally don't like to restart my computer, and in DOS I wouldn't have my Internet lifeline!