Greetings, I've recently come into possession of the aforementioned Galaga game, and it doesn't want to boot on my Windows 8.1 computer; it sometimes starts up in the taskbar and disappears, or it gives me an error message telling me the game won't start correctly, depending on the compatibility mode settings. I have installed successfully on a Windows XP computer, but no luck with 8.1, and googling a no CD crack brings up this page of a guy also failing to play it. I found the NO CD but it still wouldn't work, for those curious. I figure maybe the folks on VOGONS have had some experience with this game? Apparently it's not a well loved game, thus it's also not a well cared for game either. Any and all help would be appreciated, thanks!

This game uses DirectX 7, which is unsupported on anything newer than XP. However I've gotten other, older games like South Park or Space Invaders running just fine, and they use DX6. I tried using DGVoodoo but that does nothing. When you start the game up with different compatibility modes, it generates a text file in the root directory called "GhostException.txt", and in it there are access violations that vary depending on the compatibility mode used. With no compatibility mode, 95, or 98/ME, it mentions "Galaga caused an Access Violation in module DINPUT.dll at 0023:65492aae." When I set compatibility to Vista, V SP1, or V SP2, it instead mentions "Galaga caused an Access Violation in module ntdll.dll at 0023:76f61776." Other compatibility modes generate no txt file. I have been unable to recreate the error message it once threw up, I will post it when I come across it. Is any of this useful information?