There are a number of threads about The 7th Guest. Try the search.

they talk about the sound driver issue, but there are only two helpful posts and there are no posts closing the issue, such as: "ok, i got it working", or "sweet, thanks man", so i don't know if what these guys did helps any.

no posts describe the file system error i am having.

skwatter, you should read the link in my signature about how to ask questions.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#beprecise

my computer is an hp pavilion a1540n, dual core 2ghz processor. i am using windows xp media edition and i am using dosbox version 0.72. i know of no sound card in my system. usually when i am configuring the setups for other dos games, Soundblaster works.
however when i try to install the 7th guest (dos version) everything seems ok, but when i play the game, i get problems. here is what i do:

i mount the second disc in a virtual drive. (j:\)
i open up dosbox and type "mount d j:\ -t cdrom -ioctl"
"mscdex installed. drive d mounted as cdrom j:"
"mount c c:\7guest"
"drive c is mounted as local directory c:\guest\" (the folder i want to install in.)
"z:\>c:
C:\>D:
D:\>dir /w
After this i see all the files on disc number 2. i see the readmes the versions and most importantly, INSTALL.BAT
D:\>install
i see the menus for installing the game, i hit enter for install, it tells me it will install the 7th guest on my drive. i press any key to continue. i select the c:\ drive at the list for drives to install on. it will be installed in c:\7guest\id\t7g\. it says my cdrom drive is fast enough to run the game. the game then tests my video speed. the test results reccommend i use svga for 486 based machines. the other choice is mcga. 9 select svga and continue. now to the sound cards. the menu shows "soundblaster pro 2" for both
music and speech. i can't for whatever reason change it to any other soundblaster. i want both to be just "soundblaster" because that one works with all other games i have. but when i try to select what i want it just keeps going back to soundblaster pro 2. the only way i can change the sound cards is if i select a totally different music card, like general midi. i have never used general midi or anything but SB, and after my problem happens, when i try to boot the program again it says "sound drivers cannot be loaded" so i think that might be the problem, but i digress. so just for fun i go with SB pro 2 for the speech and music. the application copies the files o my hard drive and now it gives me the option of playing the game. so i type t7g at the prompt and press enter. it asks me to insert disc 1, so i go to daemon tools, (my virtual drive) and i load the first iso into j:\ drive. i click on the picture on the screen of the first disc. i am brought to the main menu and i select "start game". (i have tried this many times before, and if i don't insert the 2nd cd again while I'm at the main menu, windows will give me an error saying that i need to insert volume 2 of the 7th guest.) so i insert the 2nd cd before i click "start game". no error message. i see the opening advertisements for virgin and trylobyte, but i hear no sound. i am treated to a FMV intro about a crazy toy maker. this, i hear sound and speech in, so that's good. in the last video scene, when he is standing in front of his house, the video craps out and says that:

GJD file system error - aborting.
c:\id\t7g

and that was that. this is as far as i have been able to get.. i shall try that "groovie.ini thing in another post, but i am not hopeful.

ok i have done exactly what ripsaw 8080 said to so with the GROOVIE.INI file, but a message comes up stating that none of the sound cards i pick seem to be responding at their defaults or the settings i have them set at. i might have hardware conflict. i literally have no functioning sound cards whatsoever.

ok. so can somebody help me now?

thanks for your time,

Skwatter,
Andrew

ok, i got the 7th guest partly working.
the game works, i hear speech but no music!
i am running t7g.bat from my hard drive using the windows xp command prompt.
both sound and music can be set to soundblaster (but not in dosbox, for some reason.)
i then double click t7g.bat and it runs. in windows xp command prompt.
i get no music. is the music on the second cd? i hears there was a program i could download, something like svga sound or something. would that make it work?
dosbox just doesn't seem to be compatible with the 7th guest!

dosbox just doesn't seem to be compatible with the 7th guest!

No!

then what can i do to make this work?

Buy an old pc and install it there.

Or get the Windows port of it.

I've not had any problems with running The 7th Guest on DosBox. For the music select general midi (or something similar, it's been a while since I've seen the setup program) this should pass the music onto the Windows midi sequencer and will give you the best music in the game even if it takes a little longer to load. The intro video up until the book uses cd tracks. I haven't been able to get this to work, but I suspect you'll have to use an .cue/.bin image. Not sure about the GJD file system error though.

FYI: The Windows version is buggy and has voice sync problems on faster machines, it also makes the microscope puzzle impossible (the computer becomes a freaking genius because it has more cycles to anticipate your move).

The game works fine for me as well with sound set to sounblaster and music set to midi.
AFAIK, the GJD file system error is caused by no cd or wrong cd in the drive.

I was receiving the "file is not a VDX file" error message.

When I changed the music adapter to: "General Midi" in the 7th Guest install process the problem was resolved.

Here are my install steps

Make 2 files in C:\DOS\GAMES named AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS
MOUNT C C:\DOS\GAMES -t dir -freesize 400
IMGMOUNT D "C:\DOS\7th Guest-2.cue" -t cdrom
D:
INSTALL
Enter
C:
C:\t7g
Enter x4
SVGA 486 based machines
Accept these settings

Also, there's a patch.
http://www.filefront.com/905090/t7g_130.zip

If you don't want to fiddle around with DOSBox to play the game, try ScummVM, which also supports this game.
Much easier to handle, you just need to copy some required files onto your hard disk to get it recognized.