When I click on the icon for Black Gate DosBox pops up, a black window opens then it closes up entirely. (That's not the "Black Gate" I was anticipating. :D )

When I click on Serpent Isle the "Lord British Presents" comes up and I can hear the sounds of the intro in the background. The only button that does anything is Escape which closes it up.

I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium on a Toshiba Satellite P745 laptop.

First thing:
Try to change your render option in the Graphics Setup to "ddraw".
Second thing:
If that doesn't help, find the dosbos config file (don't know thw exact file name, ends with -conf) and try to change the sound setting in the [sblaster] area:
- first change to another sound device like sb16
- if that doesn't help change irq setting from 7 to 5

More info on the dosbox.conf can be found here: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf

Good luck.

P.S.:
Another possibility would be to run U7 with Exult:
http://exult.sourceforge.net/index.php
But there can be a "missing item" bug happen from time to time...

run the game as an adminstrator and it will work.

I found the program to do that "Graphics Mode Setup" in my Complete Ultima 7 file, but each time I try to save settings I get "Error: Game not installed"

Try this:
1. Go to the folder U7 is installed in.
2. open"dosboxULTIMA7.conf" with notepad.
3. go to the line "ouput=x". x being whatever it's set to.
4. Change the line to read "output=DDraw" if it does not already.
5. save file and try to launch Ultima 7.

Best way to try would be combining the tips together ;-)!!!
Change graphic render to "ddraw" AND run game with admin rights!!!

That did it! THANK YOU, EVERYONE!

Now if you'll excuse me I some memories of my college days to relive... :)

I never set this as a question thread. Is there a way to fix that?

Setting to ddraw with Windows 7 64 bit fixed it for me on my laptop!

Exult, these days, is the best way to play U7 / SI. It actually has fewer bugs than the original, not to mention that it's a lot easier to configure, and has extra optional stuff (e.g. widescreen, higher res, smooth scrolling, higher frame rate, SI's paperdols on U7, etc.)

I have this same problem, but the solution posted did not work...

Use Exult. Ultima 7 had some really unique memory managers when it was new and iirc it never really worked ENTIRELY perfectly in DOSBox because of it.

Exult fixes engine bugs, works perfectly on modern hardware, and also has a few small mods that you can install the fix gaps in functionality (mostly bringing SI features back into The Black Gate).

How do i do that?

1. Install Ultima VII (I assume you've already done so, but just in case.)
2. Go here and download an "Exult 1.5.x Snapshot"; it says "Unstable" but that's a lie. :)
3. Install Exult and point it to the folders where you installed Black Gate and Serpent Isle.

I also suggest installing the "All-In-One Audio Data Pack".

4. Play the games and have fun.

> Ultima 7 had some really unique memory managers when it was new

"Voodoo Memory" was actually just their name for "flat real mode", which a few other games used around that time (I remember playing one called "Traffic Department" or something similar), although I think the U7 team might have been the first to do so. It didn't involve any special memory manager per se, just the use of a glitch in the x86 architecture.

Essentially, flat real mode allowed the game to run as 16-bit code with 32-bit memory access, something not normally possible in inherently 16-bit DOS. Most games stuck to EMS (16 bit code and memory access, using paging to access the extra memory a bit at a time) until the advent of DPMI (DOS Protected Mode Interface), which allowed actual 32-bit operations on top of DOS.