This is a heads up to anyone who comes across this problem.

When trying to launch RCT via the GoG launcher, XP Home users will get an error window.

Line #
004: Run,taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

The reason this occurs is because the launcher is trying to run a system tool that kills processes and applications (in this case all instances of explorer.exe). However the tool in question, Taskkill, is not included with XP Home but is shipped with XP Pro. The error causes the Launcher to terminate and RCT doesn't get run.

Running the game from the RCT executable does work thankfully but without whatever stability the launcher is meant to provide.

Add me to that list. Ah well, guess I'll just play on my other computer in the meantime.

EDIT: If you go the programs directory and launch "RCT" it seems to work just fine.

Also for some reason the game installs to program files\gogcom rather than program files\gog.com.

I've been running it from the executable for a few hours now, not had any problems. I'm running it without compatibility mode or any other environment changes too.

So....why does it need to kill Explorer if it works anyway? That's what I would like to know :-)

Searching the internet for compatibility issues with the game it seems there has been issues with the load/save dialogue (a standard Windows file chooser) not appearing. It may be that killing all explorer processes is a 100% sure fire way of making it work properly. But that's a guess.

The reason it kills explorer, is because the Windows 7 (and Vista as well probably) explorer can screw with the colours in games that run in 8-bit colour (256 colours). It's not needed at all on XP, so it's a bit of an oversight for it to try and do this on XP (especially since XP Home doesn't have Taskkill).

Quite a few older games have issues with the windows explorere Exe in Vista and Windows 7. There are work arounds, but gog decided to include a program that temporily kills the explorer program in the basic instllation.Apparently in doing this they somehow messed it up for Windows XP users. But it is a minor issue with an easy fix:Run the executable in the actual RCT folder.

It's not a oversight, it is just that there is no practical way for GOG to have seperate downloads for each windows OS,so they included the explorer shutdown program for all.
APparently they did overlook testing it in XP Home for problems.
It's only a problem..and a easily fixable one...(use the executable in the RCT program folder) for XP Home;I am using XP Pro and did not have this problem,which means it should be a faily easy fix for GOG to make...there is nothing inherent in XP that causes it.
In the meantime just use the RCT folder executable.

The MD5 hash of the installer I just downloaded from GOG matches the hash for the old installer, as far as I can tell. (7c853f780ef014758b621107a605b705) This should mean that both files are the same.

Am I doing something wrong?

I just made my brand new account and purchased this game. It will not launch because of this "task kill" problem, its happening to me too. I have no idea what you are talking about with how to make it work. Please reply to me! I really want to play this game!

Run the game directly from the executable and not the Start menu shortcut. The executable is located at:

C:\Program Files\GOGcom\RollerCoaster Tycoon Deluxe\RCT.EXE