The IAU won't let you play it because it teaches that Pluto is a planet.

But seriously, is there a chance that there's a component on the disc that you need to install separately such as Video for Windows or Win32s? (I don't have this game, so I'm just guessing.)

As it wants you to reboot, it probably added something to atoexex.bat or config.sys. See if those were created in your mounted c folder.
Maybe it needs share.exe running. Try to run fakeshare before starting windows 3.x. It's linked to in my Windows 3.x installation guide.

Thanks a lot for these replies.

What has not worked at all

With respect to the other components on the disk image, all files seem to be installed in the game folder. The other executables from the game disk image run successfully, although unfortunately they are basically just adverts for other games in the MS Home series. I tried moving all the DLLs manually into the game folder, and into C:\Windows\System for good measure, but no luck, although I think it may have solved part of the problem (see below).

Good thought re AUTOEXEC.BAT (even typing that takes me back) and CONFIG.SYS. Both exist - all the lines in them seem to relate to the audio and video settings and none of them are obviously incompatible with one another or the game (although perhaps they would be if I knew what the problem was!). Perhaps the game meant to add something else there, but I can't think how to find out what it should be.

What has not worked in a more interesting way

Thanks for the tip re share.exe, which I was not aware of. It does something strange. I could load Windows with fakeshar running, but I got lots of error messages that it could not open the Main window, so no File Manager, or any other windows like Accessories or Games.

Fortunately, ALT+F+R still opened the Run menu, and I could try to open the game. I get a bit further than before, and it appears for a second to be loading:

But then I get an error message:

In the standard installation folder

In the installation folder where I manually moved all the DLLs

I get the needs more memory message even when I set memsize=512 (although I get a message in Dosbox Status Window saying max is 63).

I assume making the Main window disappear is not a usual feature of fakeshar? In which case, my current conclusion is that there may be something amiss in my installation. So I think the next step is to reinstall, set RAM to max, run fakeshar and manually move files over to see if that makes any difference.

Thanks for the help - not there yet but this feels possible!

An update:

I could not get it to work in Windows 3.1 or Windows 3.11, whatever I tried.

I then tried a bunch of different configurations. Ultimately, I had to install Dos 6.22 in VirtualBox, disable VT-x/AMD-V, then install CD-ROM drivers, then mount and install Windows 95 OSR 2, then install display drivers to upgrade to 800x600 resolution and 256 colors.

And voila:

Thanks for the replies - they kept me motivated to keep trying. Much appreciated. And in the unlikely event that anyone else in the future wants to run this, perhaps they'll stumble upon this thread and save themselves some times.

I actually got it to run on Windows 3.1 in DOSBox.
It does two things:
- installs WinG (which should be downloadable from my Windows 3.x guide) but I think how the game does it works, too. But I'm not sure whether I had it installed previously.
- it adds device=vshare.386 to c:\Windows\system.ini. So I was spot on with the share being "needed" (stupid Microsoft)

So for me it works to run fakeshar.com before starting Windows and that was it. It just ran.
Again, this was with a pre setup Windows 3.1 but I'm pretty sure I just followed my guide for that and installed all the things from that.

Really appreciate this! It works better in Dosbox with 3.1 that it does with Windows 95, which had a couple of issues around sound and video that I hadn't resolved yet. Thank you so much.

FakeShare did it for me thank you. Really, what were they thinking with those unhelpful error messages and that near-useless help file? Guess they expected you to call their support line.