I've just recently bought a Windows XP tower made specifically for gaming, and I've spent the last week installing dozens of old games on it. One of the very few games that will not run properly is Curious George ABC Adventure.

The game successfully installed, but when I tried to run it, my computer froze with the hourglass cursor, and nothing happened even if I waited a few minutes, forcing me to restart the computer. No compatibility settings in properties seem to help. Here's a video of this occurring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUVSCQokndk

What I find interesting, is that I also own the 3 other games in the 4 game series (all sold separately) and those other games I was successfully able to get running on the machine. All 4 listed the exact same requirements to run, ignoring MB of free space needed.

The requirements say Windows 3.1 or later, so I tried to install it on my 3.1 DOSBox emulator to test it (I'm using this one specifically: http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/win31dosbox.html If the link won't work, try another browser, I've found Edge works and Firefox doesn't.) It installs successfully just like in XP, but when I go to play it, the emulator shows a black screen as if the game is loading, but then nothing happens if I wait, just like the XP tower. Here's a video of this happening in the emulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IottinDHzA

I asked for help on Reddit, and I got this helpful answer from a user:

I tested this out myself, and it did in fact work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsmqbclsBHA

A few hours later, I got another response from the same Reddit user, informing me that the game does run on a properly configured Windows 95 on DOSBox-X, demonstrating it in this video: https://streamable.com/c9aenh

My current goal is to figure out how to get the audio drivers working for CGABC on my Windows XP computer so I can play it successfully with sound.

Here's the list of requirements for the game, copied verbatim from the back of the jewel case:

• 486/33MHz or higher
• Windows 3.1 or higher (including Windows 95)
• 8MB RAM (12MB recommended for Windows 95)
• Double-speed CD-ROM drive
• MPC2-compatible sound card (22KHz, 16-bit)
• SVGA display (256 colors)
• Mouse
• 12MB free hard disk space

And here's the description of the XP tower from when I bought it:

Thank you in advance for any advice you can provide. Hopefully this will be a good learning experience for me.