http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3638
--- Comment #16 from Mark K markk@clara.co.uk 2011-12-10 13:18:39 CST --- The installers for several CD-ROM titles published by GSP have a similar PIF file issue, but it's slightly different. Titles I checked so far are 20000 Pictures volumes 1 and 2, Business Cards and Discovering Endangered Wildlife. [Failing to run the batch files for these is not serious; they would just delete temporary files created by the installer.]
Based on the PIF file contents, the installers seem to be created using a program called PC-Install. The PIF file invokes COMMAND.COM instead of specifying a batch file directly.
I'll attach a +winevdm trace but the most significant lines are these:
trace:winevdm:main GetCommandLine = 'winevdm.exe --app-name "C:\users\mark\Temp\dosshell.pif" C:\users\mark\Temp\dosshell.pif /C C:\users\mark\Temp~0000.bat' ... trace:winevdm:read_pif_file header: program "COMMAND.COM" title "PC-Install DOS shell " startdir "" params "" ... winevdm: can't exec 'C:\users\mark\Temp\dosshell.pif': file not found
In this case C:\users\mark\Temp\dosshell.pif does exist, so the message Wine prints is slightly misleading. It should be a simple patch to check if COMMAND.COM is specified in a PIF file and print a similar message to the .bat file case.