Hi there; first of all, I'm not very good doing certain things on my comp; & with hubby sick I'm trying to do this on my own. I do not have lighthouse installed on my computer yet. I went to squirt the cat to download the installer & it started to download, then the lighthouse screen came up with: modify; repair or uninstall. Now I'm totally lost & don't know what to do. Did I have to install lighthouse first? completely in DUH mode.

Go to the forums and there should be everything you need to know there. Collector is a member here and you can always PM him.

http://www.squirtthecat.com/forum/

You probably had your browser set to Run the installer as soon as it downloaded.
Try sticking the Lighthouse CD in the drive and run the Squirtthecat installer.
It won't install without the disc.

Hi Jenny, What the heck is "Squirt The Cat", anyway? I have the original game of "Lighthouse" in the boxed version, and I've never heard of that expression used. CURIOUS!
Sandy

Sandy, Squirt the Cat is the name used by the guy who creates these installers to help people get older Sierra games to run.

Thanks Jenny100, I'll give it a try a little later in the afternoon.

AH, thanks, Marian. Very interesting since I try to play the old Sierra games on my WIN XP machine.

The author of the Squirt the Cat installers, jafa, has not been around for a very long time. They have not been updated for the last few years. Any issues with his installers are usually never addressed. Since I do not have his source often there is not a lot that I can do to help when someone posts on his message board with issues. There is some overlapping of his installers and my installers on SHP, so for these games I can direct them to mine, if they have trouble with the StC installers that cannot be resolved otherwise.

The StC installers use the Windows interpreter. Generally, with the Sierra SCI games the Windows interpreter is far buggy than with the DOS interpreter. Also, the Windows interpreter relies on the Windows' APIs, which are always in flux. This is why older software can be troublesome on modern Windows. In fact, that is the main thing that jafa's installers fix; hacking the game's EXE to work with newer API's. The problem is that each new version of Windows and even after some Windows updates can break his fixes. Those installers were written for XP and later, slightly updated for Vista. And now he no longer maintains them.

I still maintain mine on SHP. Since most of mine take advantage of DOSBox, the shifting API issue is not a factor for the ones that use DOSBox. I have had Windows updates break compatibility fixes that I made for Windows games. Other advantages are his always require the CD to play. while mine almost always only need the discs for installation, not to play. The StC installers can only display a game full screen, while with the SHP installers the games can be run in either a window or full screen on the fly.

I have installers for all of the Sierra AGI games and nearly all of the Sierra SCI games. You can also find many for other Sierra Family company games

New Installers for Sierra Games

The SHP Lighthouse installer can be found here:

http://sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/NewSierraInstallers.html#Lighthouse

For those interested, I also have a few non-Sierra installers on my forum - http://www.sierrahelp.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=3925 Note that while I wrote these non-Sierra installers, I am not as familiar with these games and may be of limited help with issues with the games themselves.

Thank you very much for all of that information, Collector - I'm sure it will be of help to our members.

Hi fellow Boomers,
I went to the squirtthecat website and downloaded the new installer for "Lighthouse". I took my old boxed copy of "Lighthouse-The Dark Being" out of mothballs, did the new install of the game and it's running perfectly on my "dinosaur" WIN XP computer'
Thank you "SQUIRT THE CAT".
Sandy

That's great, Sandy.

Thank you Collector for your advice in the private message; and thank you Sanford for your step by step instructions. Lighthouse works perfectly now on my xp & my win 7.

That's great news, judith.

It was my pleasure to be of help to you, Judy
Sandy