[Eugene]

I realize this is not most people's sub sim of choice. But it does have some good points and still an entertaining and serious modern sub sim. Cranked it up again on my new machine (still XP), with dos box .72 as the install method as well as the launching method. Applied the upgrade/patch. It ran perfectly, sound, mouse, animations, voices.

After running through the tutorials I shut down the program. Starting it up again via dos box, I reached a momentary opening Sierra screen and then a crash with the dreaded error message: "Opening C:\Sierra\Fast\Savegame\HOFS.dat Program Aborted."

A google search revealed one or two posts elsewhere with the same error, but the only response was to check the ini file to make sure the location of the cd or directories was correct.

I've tried every angle I can think of to resolve this error:
1. Installed from my original disk; ensured that the .ini file points to the correct (mounted) location (for me, the location is within a directly named "mydosbox") and that the entries within .ini reflect that mounted drive - on my machine drive "m" is the virtual cd drive.

2. Made an image of my original disk, installed from the mounted image - same procedure checking for accurate locations within the .ini file.

3. Deleted the contents of the Savegame directory

4. Deleted the Savegame directory

5. REM-med the line in the .ini that points to the Savegame directory

6. Changed the location identified in the .ini file for Savegame directory to add in the "mydosbox" folder that Sierra\fast resides in

Rebooted each time, or not.

I'm baffled. Running the game successfully once must change something besides the Savegame folder contents in the relatively small installed directory on my drive, since deleting those contents doesn't fix the problem. But I can't identify what that might be.

I've seen that others have gotten Fast Attack running with dos box and XP. Has anyone seen this error? Been able to fix it? Know something I am overlooking that is or could be causing the crash?

This is particularly frustrating since I know the sim WILL run just fine - the first time it is launched - but not subsequently.

Thanks for any advice on a solution!