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How to play DooM on Windows

In case you didn't know already, the original DooM games ran on DOS. Sadly, computers now can't run DOS programs. But, you can still play DooM on DOS by emulating it using DOSBox! It's really simple and you don't need any knowledge of virtual machines or emulators. DOSBox is a free, open-source program that allows you to play your DOS games on modern Windows computers (yes, even Windows 10!). Here is how you can set it up.

First, you need to download DOSBox from www.dosbox.com and install it. If you don't have administrator privileges on your computer, you can also extract the installer as if it's an archive. Now you have DOSBox installed or extracted, we need to download DooM. Luckily, id software released a shareware version of DooM with the first 3 levels, so you can play that for free. If you still happen to have your old copy of a registered version of DooM, you can use that by taking the files of the floppy disk and onto your hard drive. If you are unsure where you can download the shareware DooM, try www.dosgames.com . Once you have DooM downloaded, put it somewhere on your hard drive where it's easily accessible. A good place would be C:\DOOM (or whatever letter your hard drive uses). Make sure the C:\DOOM folder has all the DooM files inside.

Now it's time to run DOSBox. Do this by running DOSBox.exe. You should see something like this:

Now let's mount your C:\DOOM folder as a drive in DOSBox. For this tutorial, I will mount it in DOSBox as the D: drive. Type the command:
mount D: C:\DOOM
This will mount the virtual D: drive as the folder C:\DOOM. Let's say you want to mount it as the F: drive and your folder is G:\DOOM, you would type "mount F: G:\DOOM." Once it's mounted, type the letter of the virtual drive into the command line followed by a : to enter it. I will type, "D:" into the command line. Now type "doom" or "doom.exe," they should both work.

Tada! DooM on Windows using DOSBox!
Want better graphics? Read the source port article to see how!

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