Crashes with "Windows Title Not Found" error

After some futzing about with the game, it works like a charm.

The basic problem is, the game fails to add shortcuts to the Windows Start Menu under Win2K and later - therefore the previous "Windows Title Not Found Error". That isn't an incompatibility issue, Sierra seems to have used some quite advanced techniques in its' Windows 3.11 games, including some sort of universal game loader - the SIERRAW.EXE file.

SIERRAW.EXE is -not- the game's exe file, and it requires the respective RESOURCE.WIN file passed to it as the command-line parameter - which I found out after a quick googling for some help. That however didn't solve all my problems, so here's a quick guide to what should work anytime - e.g. if it works on my buggy machine, it has to work on yours...

1) Copy all the files into a directory of your choice on the hard drive - a rather crude method, but with today's hard drives and CD-ROM speeds, not much of a problem. I used the directory the installation uses by default - C:\SIERRA\KQ7\ - if there are problems, try and use a directory that's pre-Win95 compatible (directory names under eight characters, no characters that aren't 7-bit ASCII). I'll call this KQ7 Path from now on.

2) Copy KQ7 Path\English into KQ7 Path

3) Edit KQ7 Path\SIERRA.INF, and add the lines:

[Misc]
SourceDir=c:\sierra\kq7

4) Edit KQ7 Path\RESOURCE.WIN, and add the lines:

resAud = KQ7 Path\
resSfx = KQ7 Path\
patchDir = KQ7 Path\
movieDir = KQ7 Path\AVI\
robot = KQ7 Path\AVI\
audio = KQ7 Path\
resMap = KQ7 Path\;KQ7 Path\

In chapter 5, when I pick up the fireer, it explodes immediately. As far as I can tell this is some kind of timer bug (something that plagues a lot of Sierra games).

Due to that bug, I cannot move forward in the last half of Chapter 5. The game does have a feature which allows you to start a game in any chapter, so I was able to play Chapter 6 and complete it, but feel incomplete.

Windows XP Pro, SP2 2.2 GHZ Pentium 4, 1 gig of RAM, NVidia GeForce FC G05200

I didn't have any problem running this game under XP. There are different versions (DOS and Windows) but the one I ran (Windows version 2.00b) worked fine. The computer may need to be set to 256 colors and 640x480 resolution (either with compatibility mode or manually) for it to work properly.

The issue posted above, involving the fireer, is a timing bug that's related to the speed of your processor, not the operating system you're using. It has two simple workarounds. You can use a program like MoSlo or Turbo (both available for free download) to slow down the processor and get past that point. Or, you can just select the "try again" option when Valanice dies. The fireer will explode quickly again but you'll have an opportunity to take a few steps before it does. Each time you "try again" you can get closer to where you need to bring the fireer, until you finally make it. Sounds tedious but it only takes a couple of minutes... by no means a showstopping bug. :)

My original game does not run in windows XP, even using compatibility mode.

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