How does one copy an .exe file to the hard disk drive?

[twinklebiscuit95]

Hello! This is my first post on here. I hope it's ok to start off asking for help, if not I'm sorry. (´Д` ) Anyway, I downloaded the first and second Pink Gear games off of Adventure Legends, and I'm having problems. Mind you I'm not very computer savvy, unfortunately. So I downloaded it and tried running the game through daemon tools lite, and every time I start the game a message pops up telling me to copy the .exe file into the hard disk drive. I have no clue how to do such a thing. I'm using a Windows 10, I don't know if that makes things difficult for such a thing. After a while the game just started telling me to insert the disc to play the game. I thought daemon tools and stuff like that was made to emulate a disk so this wouldn't be a problem so I'm really confused. (￣◇￣ I'm not sure why it said that at one point. Anyway if anyone knows how to copy an .exe file to the hard disk drive I would really appreciate a bit of advice. I really really wanna play Pink Gear, it looks so surreal and beautiful from the screenshots I've seen! Anyway thanks in advance.

[ReyVGM]

I have no idea what game you're talking about, but if you're using Daemon's Tools, you have to mount a .cue file that should be accompanied by a .bin or an .iso.

But that's only for disc based image dumps. If the game is downloadable content, or a rom file, or a mobile phone game, then it would never come as a bin/cue/iso file, and thus, you won't be able to mount it with Daemon's Tools. After all, DT is a disc drive emulator, sort of.

As for how to copy an .exe file to the hard drive, I don't know what you mean. Copy the .exe from where to what hard drive? If the .exe is in a PC and you want to copy it to another folder, then just right-click and select 'copy', then paste it on the other folder.

[DrakeDwarf]

So you opened a virtual disc with daemon? Try looking at Your Computer, where a new virtual disk should be. Open it with the File Browser / Manager / Explorer thing in Window and see if there is an EXE file inside.

[kaoru]

This is a Japanese Win95 game? Blegh. It's odd the game doesn't AutoRun an installer and asks you to copy the .exe off the disk to your HDD yourself. Anyways, probably have to run it in compatibility mode setting (Win95, 256 colors, 640x resolution or some such) too.

[twinklebiscuit95]

Jul 17, 2016 20:54:41 GMT -5 ReyVGM said:

I have no idea what game you're talking about, but if you're using Daemon's Tools, you have to mount a .cue file that should be accompanied by a .bin or an .iso.

But that's only for disc based image dumps. If the game is downloadable content, or a rom file, or a mobile phone game, then it would never come as a bin/cue/iso file, and thus, you won't be able to mount it with Daemon's Tools. After all, DT is a disc drive emulator, sort of.

As for how to copy an .exe file to the hard drive, I don't know what you mean. Copy the .exe from where to what hard drive? If the .exe is in a PC and you want to copy it to another folder, then just right-click and select 'copy', then paste it on the other folder.

It seemed weird to me too. It's an .mdf file, if my memory serves me correct. It's a pretty old game for windows 95. It opens in daemon tools but like I said the game itself shows a weird menu telling me to copy the file into the hard disk drive, which is the weirdest thing I've ever heard of. I'm gonna see if the copying thing works like you said. 

[twinklebiscuit95]

Jul 18, 2016 6:53:54 GMT -5 DrakeDwarf said:

So you opened a virtual disc with daemon? Try looking at Your Computer, where a new virtual disk should be. Open it with the File Browser / Manager / Explorer thing in Window and see if there is an EXE file inside.

It shows that there's a CD insterted as if I actually put the disc in my computer when I look on the file explorer, yet for some bizarre reason it's being difficult with me. 

[twinklebiscuit95]

Jul 18, 2016 7:18:32 GMT -5 kaoru said:

This is a Japanese Win95 game? Blegh. It's odd the game doesn't AutoRun an installer and asks you to copy the .exe off the disk to your HDD yourself. Anyways, probably have to run it in compatibility mode setting (Win95, 256 colors, 640x resolution or some such) too.

Yeah it's really frustrating. At first it was telling me to switch the settings to those that you mentioned, so I did and it switched from telling me that to telling me to copy the file to the HDD. And then occasionally telling me to insert the CD despite the fact that in my file browser it shows as if there's a CD inserted. Maybe it's just a wonky file, I'm not sure. But when I looked on Adventure Legends again to see if there was any advice by the link, it also said to copy the .exe file to the HDD. Ugh.

[ReyVGM]

I dunno, but maybe you need to install it first? Didn't you install games back then, or did you play directly off the disc?

[Weasel]

Jul 19, 2016 0:22:43 GMT -5 ReyVGM said:

I dunno, but maybe you need to install it first? Didn't you install games back then, or did you play directly off the disc?

The Windows 95 era was a very special era in Japanese PC gaming - not everything back then even had installers. It could be the game wants you to drag all the files off the CD into a folder on your hard drive before it'll run.

[twinklebiscuit95]

I really appreciate all the advice! Unfortunately I still can't get the game to work properly. I don't know if it's a weird file or if I'm just that bad with computers but for now I'll just try and finish playing other games I have. （≧∇≦）Thanks y'all!

[kaoru]

Well, Win95 games can be a bitch to get to run on modern systems to begin with, let alone Japanese ones. You could try changing you PCs language settings to Japanese, otherwise some of these games have problem accessing certain files (it's basically the go-to thing to try when Japanese games refuse to run). Or, which is more complicated, actually set up Win95 in VirtualBox, compatibility mode isn't always enough wih these old games.

[Purple Moss]

Welcome, twinklebiscuit. I got it to run (on Windows 7). It's the first time I see something like that but you have to do exactly what it says, copy GOTOPINK.exe into your HDD.

You have the image mounted with Daemon Tools, right? Open the disc from the file explorer (double click), then select GOTOPINK.exe and copy it to any folder on your HDD. I made a folder in C: called GOTOPINK and pasted the .exe in it. I think it doesn't matter where the folder is or its name, but with older games I always prefer having a path with no spaces (and also no accents like áéó). Keep the image mounted.

SPOILER: Click to show

Before you run it, right click the GOTOPINK.exe file you just copied, select Properties from the drop-down menu and find the Compatibility tab. Check the following settings (my system is in Spanish but the order should be the same):

SPOILER: Click to show

It should run now. Have fun.

Some notes:
1. Maybe check 'Run as administrator' above. Also the Windows 95 compatibility mode might not be necessary. Just to be safe, check it. I also tried it running it with Japanese locale but noticed no difference.
2. It runs Ok, but it has crashed twice for me: once when I clicked the 'OPEN' lever to load a game (it suddenly closed), and another time when I pressed Ctrl+B to call the red box thingy (it froze, but only that one time). Compatibility issues, I reckon. I'd advice you to save often.

I know only a little bit of Japanese, so I didn't play much, but it looks pretty interesting!

[jorpho]

Jul 17, 2016 20:17:12 GMT -5 twinklebiscuit95 said:

After a while the game just started telling me to insert the disc to play the game. I thought daemon tools and stuff like that was made to emulate a disk so this wouldn't be a problem so I'm really confused. (￣◇￣ I'm not sure why it said that at one point.

Here's the thing: back in the day, programs were often written under the assumption that people could never possibly have more than one CD drive. So, the program is probably looking through your drives one by one, finding your *real* CD-ROM drive (or DVD-ROM drive or whatever it is your computer has), and then insisting that its disc needs to be there.

The quick and easy way to get around this is to just burn the game to a CD. Otherwise, you'll have to rearrange your drive letters such that your virtual Daemon Tools drive has a higher letter than your real CD-ROM drive.

[surnshurn]

running programs from win95 era can be problematic. The fact that you're being instructed to copy the file over could be a kind of general error message where the OS decided that your file is corrupt. I'd first try mounting the disc (commonly .iso but there are others). Once the disc is mounted, you'll be able to copy the .exe file to your c: drive, and run it from there. as mentioned, the game may be looking for a drive letter other than the one that your daemontools has mounted the disc to. i know that most american machines at the time used d: as the default drive letter for optical drives.

failing that: you might try getting it to run in dosbox, which will require mounting both your hard drive and the disc image file. I've gotten some stubborn older games to work this way, since win95 was based on dos.