what is the question? And did you read the guide? And you need to read the 60seconds guide to understand what you are doing there with mounting.
Read the guide Windows 3.1x DOSBox Guide and put the stuff instead of into c:\doswin into e:\doswin
when the guide tells you to "mount c c:\doswin" make it "mount c e:\dsowin" and proceed following the guide. And follow it as close as you can and then post again when you get stuck. But please follow the guide. The guide works and it makes it much easier (and much more likely) to help you when you follow it

OK I think the OP is trying to install Windows 3.1 but hasn't realised DOSBox's drives/paths aren't dependant upon the 'real' locations.

Kelly, The drives in DOSBox can be what ever you want them to be - they don't have to match the designations of the physical drives.
I'd think you'd be best to have two or more mounts - one standard one to mount a folder as the C drive where you'll install everything to and another you'll change as required to mount a folder as the install cd - in this case the copy of the windows install - posing as the E: drive or whatever.

Then you can then simply install to the default 'C:' drive when running win3.1 setup in DOSBox (it's path will be C:\Windows) and things will probably be a lot happier in general - a few old DOS games expected to be on the C: drive really and not somewhere else... I seem to think Psycho Pinball expected to be in a root folder on C: drive for instance...

hope that helps a little

Thank you very much! If I mounted c e:\doswin, will this create a "c" drive on my external hard drive just for DOSbox? BTW, my laptop's main hard drive is designated c:\. Does this mean I'll have a real c drive (laptop's main hard drive) and a "fake" c drive (the mounted c e:\doswin in DOSbox)? Won't the computer get confused over the 2 c drives? How will it tell which is which?

The emulator is self-contained except for access to the file system. If you specify your E:\ drive as the emulated C:\ drive then only DOSBox will see the emulate C:\ drive.

Kelly Stiver wrote:

f I mounted c e:\doswin, will this create a "c" drive on my external hard drive just for DOSbox? BTW, my laptop's main hard drive is designated c:\. Does this mean I'll have a real c drive (laptop's main hard drive) and a "fake" c drive (the mounted c e:\doswin in DOSbox)? Won't the computer get confused over the 2 c drives? How will it tell which is which?

In real, it remains e:/doswin. In DOSBox, it is C:
DOSBox doesn't know your real C: drive and it should really not know it.

Thanks for all the help, guys, but I've decided to put DOSbox and windows 3.11 onto my laptop's main hard drive (drive c) since I realized that all these old DOS and Windows 3.xx games won't take up that much space in my "oldgames" folder (it's the c drive of dosbox)...ok, now I'm trying to install windows into dosbox and following the guide, (I have the contents of the windows 3.11 floppies extracted into my "c:\doswin\win31" folder; this is my windows 3.11 installer folder, now I've typed "setup" <enter>, and the windows setup program started up. I chose "express setup"; and it's telling me "we recommend that you set up windows in the following directory"...what follows is a space with the default directory "c:\oldgames\win"; I accepted the defaults--pressed <enter> 2X, and I let setup copy all the files into the directory. Now the graphics part of the setup program has come up...I'm going to the guide now. Hi, I'm back; I saw something in the guide that I've missed before...as when I printed the pages from the guide out the printer might have skipped some of these pages and I was following my printout...so sorry, my mistake. Anyway, I see that when setup finishes, the guide says to edit the end of the dosbox conf file...only the markings in "set path=?path?; c:windows;" is so tiny it's difficult for me to tell what kind of characters they are. So, followed the guide & edited the dosbox.conf like this: "set path=%path%; c:\oldgames\win;
set temp=c:\oldgames\win\temp", restarted dosbox, typed "win" at the prompt, and I get an "illegal command: win."

upon startup, my dosbox shows this after the c: prompt:
c:\>set path=z:\; c:\oldgames\win;
c:\>set temp=c:\oldgames\win\temp"

You usually want Windows in "C:\Windows", I'm not sure how well pre-windows 95 programs would react to the Windows directory being in a subdirectory. (or Windows 9x programs for that matter).

Windows 9x does use variables I believe for the Windows directory but alot of programs are hardcoded. I doubt Windows 3.x uses any variables at all.

Also make sure you are not mounting your entire real C:\ drive in DOSBox. EX: "Mount c c:\" is a BAD IDEA.
EX: "Mount c c:\DOS" is GOOD.

c:\>set path=z:\; c:\oldgames\win;

You don't want a space in there I think. Make it

set path=z:\;c:\oldgames\win;

ok, I ran the setup program again and this time put windows.311 indo c:\windws. btw, I mounted as c c:\oldgames, not as c c: this time after I installed windows I edited the dosbox conf file as:
c:
set path=%path%; c:\windows;
set temp=c:\windows\temp
saved it, and yet when I restart dosbox and type "win" at the prompt, I still get a "illegal command: win." and my dosbox display looks like this at startup:
Z:\> mount c c:\oldgames
drive c is mounted as local directory c:\oldgames\
z:\>c:
c:\>set path=z:\; c:\windows;
c:\>set temp=c:\windows\temp
c:\>

uhm you know what c: and cd windows do, right?

yes. c: is the prompt in dosbox, and cd windows is "change directory to windows" ok, I type "cd windows" <enter> and then "win". Windows 3.11 runs! Very, very good! Am I supposed to type "cd windows" <enter> and then "win" <enter> in order to start up windows 3.11 in dosbox? Plus, it doesn't freeze up (remember my past post about this?) when I exit windows! This is all very, very, very good, and I'm so happy! Thanks a whole bunch, guys!

MiniMax wrote:

c:\>set path=z:\; c:\oldgames\win;

You don't want a space in there I think. Make it

set path=z:\;c:\oldgames\win;

Kelly Stiver wrote:

Am I supposed to type "cd windows" <enter> and then "win" <enter> in order to start up windows 3.11 in dosbox?

If the path is okay, just "win" should suffice. You can also put the commands in the [autoexec] portion of dosbox.conf. That will run Windows every time you start DOSBox.

Hello, all! I'm back and I want to tell y'all that my laptop is down with a virus, and it's at my sister's house. My nephew is working on my laptop to get rid of the 44 or so virus infections on it. When I get my laptop back, I'm going to install DOSbox on drive e:\ which is my external hard drive that I mentioned in this thread, as I'm planning to put all of my old DOS games into DOSbox onto my external hard drive. I'm thinking of testing all of these floppy diskette .ima files that I've made of all of these games that came on 3.5-inch diskettes so as to be sure I won't need the original diskettes nor the old Packard-Bell PC any longer. I haven't used the Packard-Bell computer (it has DOS/Windows 3.xx on it), since late December '07/early January '08 thanks to DOSbox and all these nice people on all these forums I'm on who've helped me. Will post here again in this thread if I get stuck after I get my laptop back, guys, thanks for all the help.

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Feel free to use.

Thanks MiniMax, I've donated all my ...... already to abyss.

What does these rows of dots mean?

MiniMax wrote:

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Feel free to use.

What do these rows of dots mean?

They want you to break your text worm into sentences.

/me donates a few CRLFs too 😉