RandomManA wrote:

I tried a standard install on my Windows 98 SE VM, only now the mouse locks up at game startup. I've tried with patches, without, turning hardware acceleration down, down, down, and off, and the pointer will not budge.

I don't know if you Googled, but this thread suggests it definitely should work. Are you using Virtual PC, VirtualBox, or VMware Player?

I googled that and dismissed it at first, but now I'm wondering - I'm using VMWare Player, perhaps I should try VirtualBox instead, as that user seems to have no problems. I'll try it and report back.

EDIT: Well, I spent all of yesterday trying various things. I tried every input option in DxWnd, (once I got it to launch the game properly at all), Slow Mouse Polling appeared to help, but the game still had occasional trails, and the mouse would still eventually disappear and break. I built a Windows 95 VM in VMWare Player, but sound is broken, and has been for several iterations of VMWare Player. Changing the compatibility of the VM to an earlier version of VMWare causes the VM to crash immediately on launch. I tried building a Windows 98 SE VM in VirtualBox 5.0, installing SciTech Display Doctor to get the display working properly, and the game ran, and the mouse moved, but the VM itself was VERY slow, and the game crashed upon starting a new game. I tried building a Windows 98 SE VM in VirtualBox 4.3, based on recommendations from VirtualBox's community, and installed SciTech Display Doctor, but upon installing the SciTech display driver, Windows refused to start properly, and it's about at this point that I gave up and started looking for a cheap old laptop I could use instead.

EDIT 2: Okay, good news and bad news - bad news is I lied about giving up, and kept trying, but the good news is I GOT IT WORKING!! Here's what did it - a Windows 98 SE VM in VirtualBox 4.3, with 512 MB RAM, 64MB Video memory, enabled 3D and 2D acceleration, and DISABLED VT-x/AMD-V....that last step allowed me to run SciTech Display Doctor and use the SciTech driver without causing a Windows Protection error. Now once that's done, the VM itself will be slow, but the game runs fine, mouse works EXACTLY as it should, there's no slowdown in any of the videos, the only bug I noticed was some small popping and crackling in the music during static scenes, which goes away when moving or talking to someone, but it's easy enough to ignore. I had a temporary issue with disc switching where you couldn't click through OK to load the next disc, but that may be due to using BIN/CUE files mounted in Daemon Tools, which was then mounted as the CD-ROM drive in the VM, but I was able to get around that by switching the discs in Daemon Tools, and then switching the CD-ROM in VirtualBox to some random ISO, and then back to the Daemon Tools drive, and then the game would allow me to click OK and continue.

Hope this helps somebody else - I've seen a lot of people with similar problems and all too few resolutions.

Pantsless Aaron

Yikes. I hope that's helpful for someone too. I didn't even know people were trying to use SciTech Display Doctor in virtual machines these days, or that you could get 3D acceleration in Windows 98 SE in VirtualBox (?). I wonder what the problem could be?

I would be wary of running 98 SE with that much RAM.