Myst will not run on my laptop. :(

I am not sure what the system requirements are because it is the original Myst from 1993 and I no longer have the box. Is there any way to get a game this old to run on a modern computer?

Thank you for your help.

to get old MS-DOS games from 1993 to run on Vista. Setting up config.sys to support different kinds of memories (normal, expanded, extended) with different memory managers is a long-forgotten know-how. Vista doesn't even have a config.sys.

Kees

Everyone told me not to get Vista when I bought my laptop last year. I have seen Config.sys, but I do not know how to use it.

What I said about Vista and config.sys goes for xp and config.sys also.

Anyway, the MS recommended troubleshooting is in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314106
But you won't find many people that fully understand it at the moment, I'm afraid.

Kees

My computer was running XP Pro with service pack 3. I installed Myst Masterpiece Edition. It wouldn't run. Original disc came with Quicktime 4 and Direct X 6. I uninstalled my Quicktime 7 and Direct X 9 and installed the older versions on the disc. No joy. I right clked the shortcut which starts the game, set to various descending Compatibility Modes. That helped but only got the sounds, no video, although the closing credits would show when clicking on Exit. No sort of manipulation of Compatibility Mode in either Myst or Quicktime got the game to play. I suspected it was due to the newer controller chips on motherboards which never even came with windows 98 graphic files, and Myst just wasn't able to hook into the video properly.

The Solution. It's not difficult, but time consuming and for some will be frustrating, especially if they no longer have a retail windows 98 Second Edition disc. I downloaded Virtual PC 2007 from Microsoft, which XP Pro with service pack 3 will run. If you have XP Home, you could try the Virtual PC 2004 instead, see if it will do the same for you. After installing that, I accessed it, let it control both the floppy and CD drives. I set up the virtual drive in the program, left it set to Dynamic expansion rather than a specific size, set for 128 memory use. I inserted the boot floppy and formatted the virtual drive. I then did the "sys" command to tranfer the system to the virtual drive (sys a: c in DOS. Since I'd booted with CD drive support I then changed to that drive and ran the setup.exe file. I fully loaded windows 98 SE on the new virtual drive. I adjusted the win98 settings in the display to 640x480 and for 16 bit color. I inserted the Myst disc into cd drive and installed the game into the win98 virtual drive. I was then able to properly access the game, it worked fine.

If you don't want to use the disc each time, you can create a second virtual hard drive in the windows 98 virtual system and first copy the entire MYST cd over to it, then run the MYST setup files from there to install the game.

I know this solution is about 7 months late for you, but maybe you have this thread under watch, and it will help anyone else who trips across the thread while searching for a solution. There's also a couple youtube videos on this if you search all terms Myst 98 XP virtual.

I loaded it onto a Windows XP Home with SP3 system and it ran fine. It will give warnings about not intended on that system and dire predictions of possible problems, but ignore and load the VP 2007, because it worked fine. I was able to get that and then windows 98SE and then Myst installed to my daughter's computer with no problems.

I never bothered to upgrade my laptop from XP to Vista.