If you try to start the program and get a message like the one I've attached, then try running the program as an administrator.

I just keep running into problems like this for having separate user accounts. *grumble grumble*

That helps, but now I am getting some message about a game is already in progress... press any key to exit. This is in SF1, I have not tried SF2 yet.

For Starflight 1:
( I checked RESET.BAT for the info. )

Just copy all the .COM files in the "START" directory into the "PLAY" directory. Overwrite.
This will reset the game.

These directories are under "STARFLT" directory inside the Starflight 1 directory.

That did the trick, thanks!

It should be mentioned that Starflight is both old, and massive for the time it was released. As a result, it works by modifying the game files as you play. This is why you have to copy backups of the original state of the files when you want to start over and such, and it's also why you have to save before exiting (unless you want to render the game unplayable).

Makes me wonder why the exit without saving option is there in the first place though :P
So if you copy the relevant files from the PLAY folder, you could backup your save?
EDIT: ah, I see there are two scripts in the PLAY folder, REMEMBER.bat and GOBACK.bat, that do just that.

Yeah those batch files would do the trick. However you need to edit them so that they use the right directories, where the game is installed.

Edit: By the way you can run the programs under "Tools" in the Start Menu for Starflight. :D

These days it's easier to just use the Windows Explorer GUI to make a new folder and copy the files into it. Or, better yet, just create a ZIP file of the active game folder.

I seem to recall that the batch file used to run SF2 makes backing up and restoring of save files a little more user-friendly, but I'm not sure if GOG preserved that in their release.

They did! It's very handy.