Can Pharaoh & Cleopatra run on Windows 7 and how?

[Sanviper66]

I just got a new computer with windows 7 on it. I have had the Pharaoh game for a long time and have never been able to finish it. I finally got my OWN computer, loaded Pharaoh on it and played it for about 50 hours. It now freezes as soon as I open my "saved game." However if I start over it's fine. I guess in the later stages it just freezes. I ran a compatability diognostic thru windows 7 and it did say there was a compatability error on Pharaoh. So my question is there something I can download to make it run on Windows 7 or is Sierra going to make a Windows 7 version which I will have to repurchase? Please help.. Thank you Bill

[Collector]

You have saved the error in your save game. You should follow the adventure gamers credo of "save early and save often". That way you never have to go back very far to recover errors or mistakes.

There will be no re-release as Sierra no longer exists. Even though I have the release candidate of Windows 7 installed, I have not done much experimentation on it yet. It is a little early to expect to be able to find a lot of information on making older things run on it since it isn't even on the shelves, yet. Backwards compatibility fixes for old games can take time for people devise when a new release of Windows comes out.

You can try experimenting yourself by playing around with settings for compatibility mode, hardware hardware acceleration, new drivers, etc. If you have the pro version of Windows 7, you might try "XP mode", but I have yet to try it myself. If all else fails you can try a virtualizer like Virtual PC or VMware.

[Rudy]

Also, if the savefile is corrupt, you can find various clean savefiles here:

http://pharaoh.heavengames.com/downloads/index.php