Guide: More conventional memory for playing Liero!

Made by: Johan Otterud

Do you have problems getting Liero to work? Maybe it won't start at all?
Then this guide can be useful for you. Almost all problems with Liero,  NOT working on your computer can be solved in only one way. Getting more conventional memory.
The conventional memory is used by many DOS games and can be a maximum of 640 kb. But different DOS drivers (like the CD-drivers) use the conventional memory and sometimes you just don't have enough to run for instance Liero. In order to free the conventional memory we need to put the different DOS drivers that takes your conventional memory in to the "higher block" of the memory where it won't be "in the way". You know that you don't have enough conventional memory when:

• Liero says: "Not enough free conventional memory" at launch
• Liero says: Runtime error 203 at xxxx:xxxx when loading the sound
• The sound sounds strange or "choppy" (this can also be due to bad DOS drivers for your soundcard but sometimes it's directly related to the lack of free conventional memory.

There are a number of ways to get Liero to work,  it's the Easy way, The Advanced way, and the Alternative way:

The Easy way:

• Click the Start button, select Find, and type in config.sys, click Search now.
• When the file has been found, right click on it. The popupmenu appears. Select Rename and select a new name for the file, for instance config.bak. To the same thing with the file Autoexec.bat. Reboot your computer and try to run Liero again.
  

What you do here is that by renaming config.sys and autoexec.bat you stop a lot of DOS drivers from loading, since config.sys and autoexec.bat controls which files should be loaded into the memory.

That's really is EASY, but remember that your CD will stop working in DOS mode. Just find your config.bak file and rename it back to config.sys. Reboot again and everything will be back to normal!  

The Advanced way:

• First, let's see how much free conventional memory you have. 

Click the Start button, select Run and type command, press OK.
A DOS window will appear. Type mem and press Enter.
You will see a table that let's you know how much free conventional memory you have.
Liero needs at least 560K to run, if you have less than that you have a problem.
 
• Now, click the Start button again, select Run and type in sysedit, press OK.

The System Editor will launch.Click on the window that says "C:\CONFIG.SYS".
This is a system file used by DOS. I suggest you take a backup of the file "c:\config.sys" name it "config.bak" for instance, just in case something goes wrong. 
Now, type this into the file:

DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM HIGHSCAN

If any of the lines above are already there you don't need to enter them again. If there are lines similar to 
these but not written exactly in the same way replace them with these lines.
Save the file and reboot your computer. When you're back into Windows run "command" and then "mem" again to see if there was any difference. Try launching Liero.
 

• If you still need to free more memory there is one more way. "DEVICE=xxx" can be replaced with "DEVICEHIGH=xxx". That particularly driver will then be loaded into the higher memory blocks. This is for the more advanced users.

Remembers: It's ALWAYS a risk editing system files like config.sys. 
I take NO responsibility whatsoever for your actions. 
If anything goes wrong it's not my fault!

If you feel you don't know what you are doing, let someone that knows a bit more about computers help you.

• Launch the computer in fail-safe mode, and start Liero
• Launch Liero in real-dos mode (does NOT always work)
• If you get runtime error 203 you can try launching Liero with the sound off. To do that, launch Liero from DOS or from a shortcut with the parameter /n, like this: Liero.exe /n

Observe! Most of these methods will result in a Liero without the sound turned on. I really recommend trying to free conventional memory the right way! 

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