So, for example, I could turn down the volume in Might and Magic 2, while also playing music on my PC.

You can play with the MIXER settings in DOSBOX. I don't know much about it, though.

http://www.dosbox.com/DOSBoxManual.html

(find the MIXER section)

How do I run DosBox without running a game?

I believe you can change the mixer settings in the .conf file before you launch the game. Find your MM2 installation directory and look for dosboxmm2.conf (or similar name) and open the file in notepad or another text editor. Then look for the mixer settings. I'm not sure if there is actually the possibility for a volume setting there though.

If you do need to launch DOSBox without running a game, you can either launch it directly (it should be contained in a subfolder of your mm2 installation directory) or you can modify the game shortcut for mm2 so that it doesn't run the final step of launching the game. The second option might be better because it will still use the dosboxmm2.conf file when it loads, but then will let you input a few dos commands before launching the game. I've modified the game shortcut to do this before but I don't have any DOSBox games intalled right now so I forget exactly how to do it. I think I helped someone figure it out somewhere on these forums before though...

Ah, here it is... read this post AND my follow-up post (post 16) for how to change the shortcut so it won't launch the game, letting you use DOSBox commands at the prompt before the games starts:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/might_and_magic_series/why_do_the_games_run_so_fast/post14

That will let you play with the MIXER commands but again, I'm not sure if that allows volume adjustment.

Good luck!

I tried editing the file, but when I try to save it I get, "access denied."

I also tried unsuccessfully to set NOSOUND=TRUE in DOSbox, but that also didn't work.

On Vista & Windows 7 make sure you run Wordpad / Notepad as Administrator.

My only DOSBOX game right now is TES Arena, so I played around with it. Here's what I did to get sound to mute (I think it's a bit unconventional).

Normally, what I need for a batch file was:

E:
cd DOSBox-0.74
dosbox -noconsole -fullscreen -c "mount c 'e:\ELDERS~1\ARENA\ARENA\'" -c c: -c arena

I made my own batch file called NOSOUND.BAT with the text:
MIXER MASTER 0
MIXER SPKR 0
MIXER SB 0
MIXER FM 0

I put the batch file in the arena directory

And then when dosbox started up, it muted everything. Then I just typed "ARENA" to run Arena.


I hope that helps you adapt it to MIght and Magic.

I tried running Notepad as administrator. Each time I edit the file, it gives me the option of replacing the previous file, and when I try to do that I get the "access is denied" warning.

Arg!

Check the file attributes to see if it's write protected.

If it's set to "Read Only" then just uncheck that check box.

On a slightly unrelated note, I can't run MM2 in DOSBox. I correctly follow the instructions as indicated on the Wiki, but when I type in MM2.EXE at the end it reads:

MM2: Not enough memory for 16 color Version.
Release TSRs and retry.

It's saved to my C:\ drive with 96.4 GB free, so I don't see what the problem is; then again, I don't know what TSRs are.

I haven't installed the game really - I installed it on another machine with Windows XP and transferred it to my Windows 7 netbook via Flash drive.

Does anyone have any ideas?

If you are using the GOG version, I highly recommend running the GOG installer again instead of trying to get your old install to work. GOG take care of most of the setup automatically so it should just work.

Just listen music with other devices other than PC (mp3 player, xbox, another laptop opened on the table etc.) ... that's the simplest way XD

I am surprised nobody answered the question from the original poster.

I had the same query as I found the sound in Might and Magic World of Xeen to be too loud.
If you check the dosbox manual at the location that Tallima mentioned -http://www.dosbox.com/DOSBoxManual.html
It says the following -

MIXER
Makes DOSBox display its current volume settings. Here's how you can change them:

mixer channel left:right [/NOSHOW] [/LISTMIDI]

channel
Can be one of the following: MASTER, DISNEY, SPKR, GUS, SB, FM [, CDAUDIO].
CDAUDIO is only available if a CD-ROM interface with volume control is enabled (CD image, ioctl_dx).

left:right
The volume levels in percentages. If you put a D in front it will be in decibel (Example: mixer gus d-10).

/NOSHOW
Prevents DOSBox from showing the result if you set one of the volume levels.

/LISTMIDI
In Windows lists the available midi devices on your PC. To select a device other than the Windows default midi-mapper, change the line 'midiconfig=' in the [midi] section of the configuration file to 'midiconfig=id', where 'id' is the number for the device as listed by LISTMIDI. eg. midiconfig=2

Open the config file (in my case, dosboxMM4-5.conf) that is in your games directory, and you can add the below line as an example -
mixer master 20:20
This will change the master volume to 20% for both the left and right chanels.
You can also possibly modify the music sound separately from the master (allows you to have soft music with louder sound effects) by using "FM" in place of "master", but that would depend on what sound device your game uses for the music.
You can also use the mixer command by itself to check what levels the existing sounds are configured as in your games config file. This is done by adding the below lines at the end of your file -
mixer
pause