Had another fiddle with the settings .. managed to run the software and MMX versions by reducing the hardware graphics acceleration right down.. Got sound effects but no cd audio, hmmm ... is there a way of reducing the graphics acceleration just for this game .. maybe with a batch file or something and then have full acceleration turned back up when the game is quit ? .. any way to do this ?

regards

Mabye figure out where in the registry that slider adjusts it's value and then write a script that changes it before and after you run the game.....

Might be better off just running the game under VPC/Vmware.

You could try download the Application Compatibility Toolkit from MS and going through that.

i downloaded and installed the app compatibility toolkit v4.1 i think it was... when u say try going through that.. i assume u mean looking through to see if there is an entry for this game, which there isnt.
And it looks an incredibly complex piece of software !

took up the suggestion of running under VPC .. both software versions seem to work fine with it.
and short of setting up a dual boot xp/98 system is as good as it gets !
and actually im quite impressed with VPC. might try a few more oldies with it !