F4LL0UT: Ah crap, I just remembered, two of the systems I mentioned were actually running Windows 8 and on the third one, which actually did run Windows 7 x64, I did not even have to use that fix. Sorry.
Shit happens. :)
I'll hammer the web sometime and see if I can find something but I'm doubting it ATM. Other options include trying a network-isolated cloned XP VM, and trying to install it in Linux and using Wine. I do have an old PC I could throw XP on non-networked also but that would be a last ditch. :)
I was trying to install it to test something for someone else so not a huge deal ATM, but the sad thing is that an increasing number of games have breakage like this immediately after install I'm finding. I'm keeping track of them in a spreadsheet with wiki pages for each game for my findings/workarounds etc. though, but man... lots more games are broken than I would expect. GOG support has workarounds for a number of them though which is pretty nice, but other games they are increasingly throwing out lengthy form letters that tell you to do boilerplate things, many of which you told them in your initial report you already did. It's like they are just recently starting to respond to some support requests with an auto-send-formletter response without even reading the request. I hope that was just a couple of flukes though as they normally are pretty good with stuff.
I should go through my library alphabetically one of these days and test install every game and do a little QA test run of sorts on them all and take notes though, or perhaps even try to rally up a number of other interested parties here in the community to work together to do the same thing. Seems like there
are solutions for a lot of common problems out there but not all pulled together in one spot, and often simple fixes that GOG could include directly in a game's installer/configuration they just leave broken and maybe put an entry in a support article for it. Still 1000 times better than Steam mind you, but room for improvement too. :)