After reading the previous post about the game simply crashing (and subsequent google searches) I was about to give up hope of running this game without installing win95 when i hit upon this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/games/expert/durham_og.mspx

At first glance your probably thinking that you already tried to alter the compatability manually and it didnt work. This time, use the wizard and during the process make sure you check the box to disable visual themes and check the one for windows 95 compataility. I bet the game will be running before you get a chance to respond to the wizard's question of, "Is your game running ok?".

Good Luck all, I hope this helps.

Update:
Forget my previous post, in my haste to share my discovery of getting past the load in screen of the game, it now crashes when attempting to start a mission or enter combat. I guess some things were just not ment to be ;(

I have this game running under WIN XP. The movies do not play well but the game seems to be fine.

I installed Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007. I used that to create a 'virtual machine' on my XP system and I installed on it, I had the cd from an old machine that is now dead but you can pick up a WIN 98 cd plus manual at car boot sales for around 50p

Once I had that set up I was able to run a virtual WIN 98 system in a window on my XP machine. I used this to load ST Generations and, apart from the video sequences it plays OK

This game will run fine under windows xp win98 compatibility ONLY if you have an AGP 2x card! Or if you can set the AGP of your current videocard to 2x in the motherboards bios. If it is locked to AGP 4x or 8x or if it is an PCI-Express card, it will never work (but programs like virtual pc emulate an older videocard).
After all my research and testing on other Star Trek games aswell, this appears to be the same case for Star Trek New Worlds and Star Trek Dominion Wars.
Additionally, I found that failing movie playback in those games is related to the version of Windows Media Player. When using version 9 it did not work, but when using version 7.1 it did.
I hope this will be usefull to all of you.

It did not work under XP - OK, everybody knows that.

Under XP it starts with Win98 compatible mode, skips videos and shuts down to desktop when you try to join the first mission. Same with Vista.

If you install VMware Workstation with Windows 98 SE and Media Player 7.1 it starts, runs the first screen and hangs up with a white screen when the intro movie should start.

Its realy not possible to start that game. :\

It seems like a problem with Video Codecs and/or modern Graphic Cards (PCI-E) and something...

While doing a google search I found this and it seems to work although the video's aren't working on my current pc I am told this is because it requires windows media players 7. I'm perfectly happy to play without them for now though.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=198766&topic=46968657

It basically says there to right click after clicking transport and it should bring up the next screen I don't know why the heck it works but it does.

Here's how to get Generations to run on XP, with movies, but still with the right click problem.

1. Install Generations. As I remember, you shouldn't need compatibility mode to install, just to play.
2. Find stgens.exe (usually C:\Program Files\Generations\) and set the compatibility mode to Windows 98/ME. I also have checked "disable visual themes" and "turn off advanced text services for this program", though I have not tested to see if they have any effect.
3. What you need to do to get into missions is right-click during the fade/transition screen between clicking "Transport" and the mission briefing screen. You (I do at least) will also need to right-click during the transition screen just after loading a saved game.

At this point the game runs for me, though with no movies. If that's fine with you, or if you don't like the idea of installing something else onto your computer, you can stop here. If you want the movies, then read on.

What I did was download a replacement for Windows default Cinepak codec, the format in which the Generations movies are encoded. If you don't know what a codec is, don't worry, you don't need to.

First, I went to here:
http://www.free-codecs.com/Cinepak_Codec_download.htm

I downloaded the 32bit version (actually, I tested both the 32bit and nt versions, but the 32bit worked for me). Save this to the desktop or whatever easy access folder you want. It should be called "cvid32.zip".

Next you need to go to your windows\system32 (usually C:\WINDOWS\System32\) folder and find a file called ICCVID.DLL and rename it to something like ICCVID.OLD. What you rename it to is not important. You could even overwrite it if you want, but I don't like doing that.

Open the file "cvid32.zip" you downloaded with whatever unzip program you choose and extract "ICCVID.DLL" to the windows\system32 folder.

Now whenever you run Generations the movies should play.

Have fun!!!!

This game runs just fine under Windows 98 , so go out find and old unit likie i did and then get a basic graphics card and play this great game. The only problem i have found is this games saving mechanizm doesnt work most of the time .

It will not work at all under vista and only runs for about five minutes into the game on windows 98