Johnny Castaway won't run

I followed the instructions for 64 bit but it won't run. The screen launcher is in my screensavers, but when I click on DOSBox, it opens for a split second and closes on it's own. I downloaded the latest version, but it does the same thing.

Linked pages

• How to run Johnny Castaway on Windows 64-bit
• Johnny Castaway screensaver

Margaret6 years agoWindows 7 x64, Firefox

9 replies

• Hello Margaret,

  Please open the DOSBox configuration file again, scroll down to the bottom and put a pound sign (#) in front of the last line that reads "exit". Then save the file and start DOSBox again. The screensaver probably won't run, but you can now see what goes wrong in DOSBox, so please report back what you see on the screen.

  It will look like this:

  mount c c:\dosbox
  c:
  cd windows
  win runexit c:\windows\scrantic.exe /s
  #exit

  Rob (Screensavers Planet)6 years ago

• Thank you for your quick reply. I was able to find the mistake and fix it, so now it works! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

  Margaret6 years ago

• Just out of curiosity, any idea why it isn't full screen? I changed it to "true" but it isn't full. I'm still very, very happy to have my favorite screensaver again, but I was wondering, since there's no option in the settings to make it larger. Thank you again!

  Margaret6 years ago

• Great! I'm glad it's working for you now.

  What part of the screensaver isn't full-screen? Is it DOSBox, so that you see the Windows environment around the DOSBox window, or is the Johnny Castaway screensaver displayed too small with large black borders on all sides?

  Rob (Screensavers Planet)6 years ago

• It's the screensaver itself, with black borders on the left and right sides, but not on the top and bottom. It's really not that big of a deal, but I was wondering if that was fixable.

  Margaret6 years ago

• I think it depends on the aspect ratio of your screen. On mine, I only see a thin border at the top and bottom of the screen, but I suspect you may have a wider screen.

  Back when Johnny Castaway was designed, most monitors had a maximum screen resolution of 640x480 or 800x600, corresponding to a 4:3 aspect ratio. Most modern screens, however, are much wider and have aspect ratios like 16:9. Displaying a 640x480 (4:3 or 12:9) image "full-screen" on a 16:9 display will inevitably lead to leftover space on the sides, unless you stretch the image to make it fit the whole screen, but unfortunately that would not look very good.

  Nothing we can do about that, I'm afraid.

  Rob (Screensavers Planet)6 years ago

• No big deal! Thank you for all your help!

  Margaret6 years ago

• unable to run, I did the pound sign. This is what I see C:\>cd windows Unable to change to: windows. then another command C:\> win runexit c:\windows\scrantic.exe /s Illegal command: win.

  Kyle6 years ago

• If you can't change into the Windows folder, something has likely gone wrong in step 2 of the tutorial. Please look over the instructions again and repeat them exactly as described. Instead of "cd windows" you could type "dir" and hit the Enter key to see the contents of the directory you're in. That might give a clue about what went wrong.

  Rob (Screensavers Planet)6 years ago

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