there's more than just format to playing back different platformed recordings. actually the dos and windows mame's of the same version have the same file format (except for a small version number in the header of the windows format.) it's how the game is recorded or is played back that stops playabcks, sometimes recording with out sound fixes this platform incompatibility other times there's no way you'll even see a windows recording in dos or dos recording in windows.(posted 9329 days ago)if you really don't want to do reconfiguring, try to find a machine that the dos version works with and use it. it is about 5 times easier playing back dos versions than windows versions, no registry keys to mess with and reset in changing windows versions, The windows versions are 4 times larger to keep around as well. with the dos version, just unzip and playback, once i got all the right variables i can use the same mame.cfg for every dos playback since mame30.
in my total experience the un-optimized dos version works faster than the windows version, although at one time (before i switches some dos window memory options around) i thought the windows version was faster.