Going through hell with Myst here (along with Journeyman 2 for that matter, but that's a different story).

I've followed the advice in the other thread and set the game to "run as admin", I've disabled visual themes and I've fiddled with the compatibility mode. I've even downloaded the earlier version of DirectX.

In WinXP mode (both sp2 and 3), the game hangs upon loading, while in win98 and win95 the sound loads along with the cursor, but the game is unresponsive.

Anyone got any ideas on how to get this game up and running?

Have you contacted Support?

You say Myst... are you talking Masterpeice Edition, RealMyst, Riven, or...?

I'm running Real Myst and Riven on Win 7 Home Premium. I use compatability mode XP SP2, Disable visual themes, and most importantly, in the control panel for quicktime change the setting you see in this screenshot: Safe mode (GDI only) on the advanced tab should be selected.

I still have a freeze or two here or there, but it's tolerable. SAVE REALLY OFTEN, and you'll get through it. I had Riven running w/o any problems at all, (except the Save As dialog has no edit box to put in a filename. That was weird.)

Anyway, I STRONGLY SUGGEST you run RealMyst instead of masterpeice edition. RealMyst is the more enjoyable experience BY FAR.

REMEMBER the quicktime control panel setting is the most important part in my opinion. Go to windows control panel and find QuickTime | go to the advanced tab.

Have you tried using the win7 virtual machine?
It comes originally with the win7 professional install, and you can make the VM create a computer with win98 or winxp to run old games with better success than in native win7.