After 3 hours, uncountable cups of tea, plenty of screaming, and a lucky hit on the patch which I found on eMule by accident, I have managed to install Discworld 1 plus (hopefully) the patch and it all works perfectly (sound and music is perfect and it now actually saves). I have yet to find an install guide though so I will provide this in case anybody else out there ever needs any help. I've tried to make it (overly) fool proof in case anybody with very little knowledge of computers reads this. PLEASE NOTE THIS IS FOR THE CD VERSION ONLY.

Firstly, you will need:
VDMSound
DOSBox
The Patch (I've made it an attachment)
If you have WinXP SP2 and you haven't already gotten the DOS Apps patch, I would recommend getting that now (http://support.packardbell.com/de/item/index. … &ppn=P920400503)

Also, it'd help if you could see the full file names. Simply open My Documents, click 'Tools' at the top, select 'Folder Options...', Clcik the "View" tab, and deselect the box next to "Hide Extensions for known file types" in the Advanced Settings box. If at any time you can't open a file try to open it using DOSBox.

1. Anyway, with DOSBox, VDMSound and the SP2 patch installed if necessary, unzip the disc_up.zip file somewhere where you can find all it's contents (e.g. in a new folder in My Documents).

2. Insert your CD and explore. Open the disc.bat file. If it says something along the lines of "Can't find G" or Can't find "E" simply press 'i' for ignore. Repeat until the actual program runs (You'll know when this is because the background changes colour and it says something like Install Discworld. It'll ask you where to install the game to. Default is C. Just click enter.

2. Having finished that it's now time to configure your sound devices. It should automatically go to this screen. Highlight "Select and Configure MIDI Music Driver. Press enter. Select "Creative Labs Sound Driver or 100% Compatible". Press Enter. Highlight "Attempt to Configure Sound Driver Automatically". Enter. Enter again (It'll say "OK"). Do the same for the Digital Audio Driver. Then highlight "Done" when you're finished and press Enter.

If this doesn't automatically load or simply doesn't work, don't worry. Just leave it for now.

3. The Game will start. There may be slightly choppy sound. Anyway, at the Title screen press F1 and select Quit.

4. Remember the files you unzipped at the start? Go and find the files wherever you unzipped them to. Open DISC.104. It should make a whole bunch of new files. Copy all thes files and put them in C:\DISCWLD.CD (open "My Computer" and then open "Local Disc". DISCWLD.CD should be in there somewhere). Select "Yes to All" when it asks if you want to overwrite the files.

5. In DISCWLD.CD open SETSOUND.EXE and check the settings are the same as when you configured them in step 2. If you couldn't do it before, do it now.

6. Having done that, right-click on DISC.BAT. Select "Run with VDMS". Select "Set up a custom configuration" then "Create a new configuration from scratch" then click "Advanced" select the Compatibility tab and select the "Enable low-level CD-ROM support (MSCDEX)". Click "Apply", "Okay", "Next", "Done". The game will start again. This time it should be a lot smoother and the sounds should be better.

7. OPTIONAL. If you want, in the DISCWLD.CD Folder, select the DISC shortcut made by VDMSound and copy it to your Desktop. Simply click on this next time you want to play.

FINISHED. Please post if anyone has any troubles understading my guide and I'll try and improve it. Also, if you do get it working I recommend changing the Double Click speed under the control options menu. The default setting is way too fast!

Thanks for sharing this info with us. 😎

Hi!

I've finally got my hands Discworld 1 again and want to play it on WinXP. I've tried everything you've posted above, but can't get it to work! Maybe you've encountered the same problems and know what to do... Although my CD is in a Dutch case, the game itself is supposed to be in English, so I guess I have the original CD. (Contents DISCWLD folder, DRIVERS folder, DISC.BAT and DWU.EXE) I've installed DOSbox, VDMSound and the WinXP SP2 Dos Apps patch. I can run the disc.bat file from the cd just fine, I've installed it on C, I can configure the sound devices, but when I select "Done" I just get a black screen and nothing happens anymore. Also if I don't configure any sound device the application crashes after "Done". Also if I just go on with your guide by replacing all the installed files by those from DISC.104 I can't get it to work. If I run DISC.BAT (the one in the DISCWLD.CD folder on C ??) with VDMS. The program freezes after it says it can't find the CD. I don't get any options to setup a new configuration or anything. Also if I follow the VDMS tip by editing the AUTOEXEC.VDMS file it doesn't help that much; although it doesn't complain about not finding the CD anymore, it just freezes with a black screen. Help! I desperately want to play this game!

Hmm... Judging from the point where you get a blank screen, that's the game itself trying to start. I have no idea what could be wrong, mostly due to the whole Dutchness of the game case. I honestly don't know what could be wrong as two of my computers happily played my game without any problem. Anyone else?

My guess is that the game itself is just the normal English cd (thank god), the dutch casing explicitly states that the game is in English. Maybe there is some way to check this or to obtain a version number or anything? If I know that I have the normal version I'm at least a bit more confident that I will be able to play eventually as it has been shown to work for XP.

Firstly, can I say thank you for the guide, without it I would still be staring at my computer wishing it to work! I have followed all of the steps on your guide and managed to get sound but I cannot complete the last step. So, my sound is working but is not smooth. Basically when I right click on the DISC.BAT document and select run with VDMS it comes up with a message that says 'cannot find disc'. Do you have any solutions for this? This means I am not getting the options you explained in step 6 - i.e. select set up a custom configuration etc. Any help / advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Hmm... To be honest, I don't really know. I'm not really good with troubleshooting and it took some time and effort to make my computer play the game. Did you select the Enable low-level CD-ROM support (MSCDEX) tab? Or is this before that?

I can't get as far as that. On your original guide point 6 says "right-click on DISC.BAT and select "Run with VDMS". When I do this I get a black screen with the message "cannot find disc, press any key to continue". Unfortunately, I never get any further than this so I can't set up a custom configuration and the enable low-level CD-ROM support.

Any thoughts?

Many thanks excellent walkthrough