Justin has recently asked me to get him the old “Wolfenstein” wallpaper/screensaver which was popular many years ago. I didn’t get around to it quick enough for him so he decided to take things into his own hands. Apparently, he downloaded a copies of both, Wolfenstein 3d and Doom games and tried running both installations on his machine without any success. He even went as far as downloading a DOS emulator, but he couldn’t get anything working on his modern (ahem!) Windows XP pro computer.

I won’t get into the discussion we had about his downloading off the internet and as it turns out, a site with an .ru extension!!! (that’s Russia for all of those unfamiliar.) But he won’t do that again. Justin asked me if I could get those old games running on his pc? I instantly said Yes!~ without any hesitation.

Two things happend.

One - Justin was blown away by my knowledge of using DOS commands to get around his computer! He couldn’t believe his eyes as my fingers danced around the keyboard and now he seems to have an even greater respect for my “hidden” computer talent.

Two - DOSbox!

DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, joystick, modem, etc., necessary for running many old MS-DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux and FreeBSD. However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any MS-DOS or PC-DOS (referred to commonly as “DOS”) application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early development.

DOSBox also comes with its own DOS-like command prompt. It is still quite rudimentary and lacks many of the features found in MS-DOS, but it is sufficient for installing and running most DOS games.

DOSBox has a lively, user-supported community forum

I have to say, it was so cool to finally be able to demonstrate my mastery of Wolfenstein 3d after all the times I fumbled with his Xbox controller.

Sweet Justice has been served!

If you have any old favorites and thought they would never run on your pc again, try DOSbox.

Knowing the status of your hard drive is a great way to prepare for problems that may potentially arise. And thanks to CrystalDiskInfo obtaining this information from your hard drive couldn’t be any easier.

CrystalDisk will gather data from your hard drive and will let you know its current temperature, the number of power cycles and even the number of hours the drive has been on. All this information comes in handy when trying to determine the root of a system crash or data failure, especially when you’re dealing with an older drive in a crowded system case where cooling may not be optimal.

Notice the report above showing “Caution” for my “Reallocated sectors Count” status? This error may raise a few eyebrows on a new drive, but not on my laptop with 6,123 hours of use on it.

All drives eventually have bad sectors that are remapped, but my personal opinion is that this really shouldn’t begin to become much of an issue until the drive is at least three years old, and even then, should only require more frequent backups, monitoring and full surface scans, until the drive really begins to fail from normal wear-and-tear.

CrystalDisk is a free application available for Windows and is a Hiddenpcmaster Approved Utility.

Via Download Squad