CAN NOT get DSDA or GZDoom to work need some help figuring out computer stuff

[Insaneprophet]

  This may not be the perfect sub forum to post this but I feel like it may get more eyes here and I hopefully will recieve the help I need.

  So I am as close to a computer illiterate as anyone is likely to find anywhere. Bere with me as I explain my issues and what I need help with.

  I have a very old desktop PC and I have only ever been able to somehow get Lzdoom to work on it. I have a handful of times tried to download different versions of Gzdoom and have failed in every attempt.

  With the release of Eviternity 2 I am faced with having to try again. My preferance would be to have both DSDA and GZ both up and running but alas, me and my computer are both shite.

  From the dsda site I am mostly lost looking at it then after clicking on what I think should get me the latest version and downloading something, when I try to unpack it, it gets hung up on a textfile and never seems to get "done." A file for dsda shows up where I directed it but all thats in there is a text document and an application. Trying to open the application or trying to drag and drop doom2 wad onto it just freezes up the computer.

 It would look like I have better luck with gz, but when I try opening it I always get a "zmusicdll file not found on pc" error.

I am unsure if I can even be helped but if anyone is willing to try it would be greatly appreciated.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Insaneprophet

[Shepardus]

If you're downloading dsda-doom from GitHub you're in the wrong place, the download is a Google Drive link at the bottom of the thread's opening post.

 

If GZDoom is complaining about zmusic.dll not being available, I would guess you didn't extract the zip file, because the dll should be in there.

[Insaneprophet]

So Ive done everything yet again and I still cant get either to finish unzipping or working without fatal crashes. I AM HOPELESSLY LOST! Somebody out there has to be able to walk me through what is going wrong.....

[Insaneprophet]

After 8 hundred million tries Ive finally got dsda to finish unpacking. I was able to get doom 1 to start by drag/dropping the wad onto the application but the doom2 wad gives fatal errors and crashes when I try it. Im making baby steps but it sure would be nice if someone more knowledgable about this stuff would step in...

[No-Man Baugh]

Ok so how old of a computer are we talking? give us a year or at least a general era and the version of whatever computer you got. If you can try and find out if your computer is 32-bit or 64-bit, because I don't know what a 64-bit executable trying to run on a 32-bit computer looks like: but it can't be pretty

[Insaneprophet]

So if im looking at this right it is a Dell Inspiron One 2020.

That is NOT the year i got it though, prolly more like 2013ish

[No-Man Baugh]

When trying to run Doom 2 what does the pop-up window say after getting a fatal error? It should give a reason why the error happened

 

Where did you get your Doom iwads? (i.e. Doom.wad, Doom1.wad, Doom2.wad, ect) if the crash error reads "Identifyversion: no iwad found" when dragging and dropping doom2.wad then it's a bunk wad

Also: can you try out ZDoom v2.8.1 for me please? I'm not saying you should settle with it, It's just a sanity test to see if the problem is with GZDoom and DSDA-Doom or with something else

 

[Insaneprophet]

Ive figured it out. Was a bad copy of doom2.wad, I made a new copy of it from my lzdoom folder and it worked. @No-Man Baugh THANK YOU SO SO MUCH for begining to try to help. When I get a chance I will try to get Gz running too but I imagine that will fight me too.... I really am just experimenting and using 30 year old knowledge to figure tgis stuff out.