I am trying to use the fan patches availalble from exodus.voyd.net, which are posted on the sticky thread with resources. When I attempt to run the update applications, I get a message:

The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check you computer system information to see whether you need an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher.

I am running Windows 7 on my computer. I have unsuccessfully experimented a bit with running the programs in compatibility mode, with the mode set to Windows XP. I am not sure what to do next.

I'm guessing you have Win 7 64 bit and these patches are probably 16 bit. 64 bit editions of Windows drop support for 16 bit applications. So, if you have access to a computer with 32 bit version of Windows, try to update your Ultima 2 on it. I would gladly help you with this, but I don't have Ultima 1-3 games.

I finally figured out how to make it work. I went through the Dosbox emulator program that comes with the Gog games. It was a little circuitous, since Dosbox does not like the directory names with spaces in them which are common with later versions of Windows. However, it does work. The steps:

1. I created a new directory under the root directory of my hard drive with a simple name. In this case I called it Trial. I then copied all the files from the Dosbox directory under the Ultima trilogy folder in the Gog games folder into the folder Trial. I put all the files from the Ultima 2 directory in Trial. I also put into Trial all the files from the patch, including the additional binary filaes needed to run the patch in a non-Windows environment.

2.I started up the Dosbox program by running its executable from the folder Trial. I tagged the folder Trial as directory C in the Dosbox environment with the command

mount c: c:\trial

and switched to the directory c by typing the command c:

3. At this point, I was able to run the install programs as per the instructions in the Readme file.

4. I identified which files had been modified by sorting by modification date and copied the modified files back into the Ultima 2 folder.

Thanks for posting the solution that you found

+1