If you're running Vista or 7 and the game crashes on startup, right click on the shortcut and in the Compatibility tab, pick "Disable Desktop Composition" then hit OK.
The next time the game will come up it will tell you to install Quicktime, hit cancel and the game will run.

Hmm.
Unfortunately, on VIsta 64, this doesn't seem to have fixed the problem.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
Actually, it seems to run if I switch to compatibility for Win95 - sound is a little muddy, and it still prompted for the install of Quicktime (which I cancelled).
I'll keep 'playing' with settings.
One odd thing - it shows as a very little window in the middle of the screen, surrounded by a lot of bblank screen - Seems to be a small video inside a large window.

I haven't installed the game yet but . . on Vista/Win 7 I always right click the game icon, select Properties, Compatibility and check mark "Run this program as an administrator"
The "very little window" is probably the original max res that the game can run at so you might need to the game shortcut, right click, Properties, Compatibility and check mark "Run in 640 x 480 resolution". Sorry for being so vague, will know more after I install it . . . . =^ )

I can confirm that going to the game shortcut, right click, Properties, Compatibility and check mark "Run in 640 x 480 resolution" will make it "full screen" . . . almost . . .=^ ) . . . that was about the maximum res in 1994.
No manual?? .... took me a while to figure out that moving the pointer to the top left corner of the game gives you the options dialog

Yeah, I have done everything that was said to do. But as soon as the game launches it says Windows has stopped working for this application, or something like that. No matter what I do the game will not play. Any other suggestions? =(

Someone please solve this!

worked for me, thank you very much

This helped me out, thank you!

Under Win 10 64-bit, the installer offers an install of QT-Lite.

If you say no, it WILL crash. Post QT-Lite install, it seems to work exactly as it should, :)

I was able to run The Manhole on Win7 only after setting compatibility level to Vista. Setting compatibility to 95, 98, XP, etc didn't make it work.