I installed ROTS on my Dell M1530 laptop with XP.

As far as I know, all video card/sound card drivers are up to date.

I start the game, go to Gil's tent, click on the tape recorder > eject button, pick up cassette tape, put it into the recorder, then try to close the lid, try pressing play to hear Gil's message, but the game freezes up after I pick up the tape and put it into the slot.

Have applied the patches.

From here
http://riddleofthesphinx.com/hints/hints_tips.html
about 2/3 of the way down the page.

I applied the patch, started the game, took the tape, backed away from Gil's desk, went out of the tent, re-entered the tent, inserted the tape, tried to play the tape, and the game still froze up.


EDIT - I tried everything in the Quick Time suggestion. The game still freezes up. Will I ever be able to play it????

Read what I quoted above.

I tried everything that you quoted in the Quick Time suggestion. The game still freezes up. Will I ever be able to play it????


EDIT - I even tried going into my M1530's dxdiag and disabling Direct Draw, but the game still freezes up, even though I grabbed the tape from Gil's desk, exited the tent, re-entered Gil's tent, inserted the tape, Yuk the game still froze up.

Either try it on a different computer or ask for a save over in Hints.

By the way, the patch on that page was for the original version of the game from year 2000. If you have a newer version, you wouldn't want to use that patch and that could be your problem.

I have the 3 CD version. I'm thinking of installing it in my Windows 98SE Virtual PC guest - I may have done this back when I had my old laptop when I first got the game from someone on the GB trading post.

cruise are you playing in compatibility mode? That worked for me when I had the same problem.

I tried this, but the game still froze. What gives?????

I know there is some way to fix it!

Have you tried it inside a VM? It was made for Windows 98 and 'should' run in XP or newer since then -- as long as the QuickTime version you use is compatible.

By the way, there are two 3 CD versions of the game. I don't think the patch would have harmed either of them though.

That's what I was trying to do last night - install it in one of my Windows 98SE VM's (VPC 2004/VMWare Player) and that's when I ran into those issues you see posted here in Glitches by me.

I was able to run this game ok on my old laptop - the HP Compaq Presario X6000 that I gave my nephew (Tim) when I got my MBP back in '09. That tape recorder freeze was not a problem back then (Dec/Jan '07/'08)

I have the year 2000 version of the 3 CD game.

Anyway, when the game installs, it asks me if I want to install it with or without QT 4. And upon completion of the install, it tells me I should run it in either QT 4 or QT 4.1.2 that is on the first CD (I haven't tried this yet), just before it tells me to exit/finish the game's installer.

I thought it worked better with QuickTime 3.02 than with 4. But if you want to use QuickTime 4 or later check the "Troubleshooting Tips for QuickTime" on the ***Riddle of the Sphinx Tips & Tricks website***.

I already tried all these tricks with QT 4, even completely turning off 3D acceleration for the M1530's NVidia card, alt+tabbing, one trick at a time, but none of them worked.

I tried uninstalling QT 4, d/l & installing QT 3.02, restarting the game, and if I recall correctly, this didn't work either. Which version of QT should I use for the game in a W98SE VM?

EDIT - Thought I had QT 3.02 installed, but turns out it's really QT 2.0.3, have the game running in W95 comp mode on M1530's XP, 3D acceleration back up to Full, did the tape thing on Gil's desk, and this time the tape actually played!

Great cruise! Enjoy the rest of the game! It's a keeper!

I had the same problems...went through Virtual PC and tried installing with and without QT 4, but what finally worked for me was to install and play with the Quicktime 7 and set the compatibility to XP Service Pack 3 with Windows 7 64-bit and the 1.01 patch. Hopefully this will work for someone else.

I also tried the BigFish version but found that a lot of the video and virtual panning had been removed and it wouldn't play the tapes either.

I remember a "patch" for this problem that didn't actually fix the problem, but was just a text file or files that gave you the information that was on the tape that you needed to go on with the game. I'm not sure I can find anything more concrete, I'll check on my old computer and report back.

The only thing I had was that ROTS v1.01 patch that's on the top of that Tips and Tricks page that Jenny linked to.

I did, however, find what I had remembered. Read this: Text of the 5 Cassette Tapes in Gil's Tent

That should allow you to continue the game. Thanks to Mr. Bill for compiling and preserving this info.

There are patches for both version 1.0 and 2.0 here
http://www.riddleofthesphinx.com/rots_101.html

There was also a 1.1 version that apparently had no patches made for it.

General troubleshooting suggestions, including the tweaking of QuickTime here
http://www.riddleofthesphinx.com/hints/hints_tips.html

It worked better for me with QuickTime 3.02 than with QuickTime 4, but I had the older version game and was playing on Windows 98 on an old computer. That may work OK in Virtual PC, but for modern 64-bit Windows 7 I don't know how well QuickTime 3.02 (or even QuickTime 4) would work.

I still like using Virtual PC for QuickTime games since you never have to worry about installing a version you can't get rid of and is "too new" for your older games -- just back up your virtual computer folder before installing any QuickTime and you'll have a fresh virtual computer to go back to for games that use a different version of QuickTime.