I am having difficulty launching the game. Whenever I try I don't receive any error messages, and all I see on the screen is my mouse as it would appear at a low resolution. I am running Windows Vista on a notebook. Any suggestions about how to solve the problem or what it might be in the first place?

Alright. Thanks for you help.

I am having this exact same problem. I play other GOG games with no issues (Might and Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, Duke Nukem, etc). Is there any update on this? I have tried all the fixes suggested here and on the other thread but nothing is working. Any help would be appreciated.

I'm having the same problem too. I left clicked it and select run as admin, my screen goes black and my mouse becomes an "hour glass" then nothing. I tried the compatibility mode suggestions,
My laptop's specs are:
Windows Vista Home Premium SP2
Intel Pentium Dual CPU T3400 @ 2.17GHz
3GB Ram
Is it really neccessary for me to download quicktime to run this game?

I have the same (or at least similar) problem.
When I try launching the game, all I get is a black screen with the task bar still at the bottom of the screen. I have to use the process manager to get rid of it, but after doing that, my screen is left as a little square up in the corner while the rest is black (I can't even make those blue selection squares in the black area).
EDIT - forgot to mention that the sound plays for about a second or so before it hangs (nothing ever shows up on the screen, though).
None of the suggestions have helped, sadly.
My OS is Vista 64 Home Premium.
CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 940
Video card - ATI Radeon HD 4870

I am still downloading the game so . . .
If running Vista / Win 7 make sure when you install that you right-click the setup.exe and click "Run as an administrator" from the resulting dialog. If you just double-click the setup.exe you may not get a full install since both OS's tend to block some disk writes when not installed as an admin.
Also, after installing, right click the game shortcut, click Properties, click the Compatibility tab and check "Run this program as an administrator". I uncheck "Run this program in compatibility mode for" to start with, especially with Win 7.
Don't mean to suggest you didn't do the above . . . =)
If you did install correctly and still get the same problem, you might uninstall, disconnect from the internet, turn off UAC, turn off your AV and Firewall and install in a directory outside of Program Files. Enabling your internet connection, UAC, AV and Firewall afterwards.
Create a new directory, I like C:\Games, right-click the setup.exe, click "Run as an administrator" in the resulting dialog and on the first dialog of the GOG installer, click the Options button in the lower left corner of the dialog and point the install to the new directory created outside of Program Files.
Folks with AMD Dual Core CPU's might want to consider using the AMD Dual Core Optimizer if all else fails. It is free, has no user interface, loads and runs in the background and can be uninstalled from the Control Panel. I does help some games to run better. I have been running it on my laptop for several months with no problems at all, Painkiller likes it . . .=D
Hope this helps . . .=)
Edit: The reason I suggest trying the above is that it sounds like the game is being denied access to hardware / software which happens often when not installed as an admin.

@stuff - Thanks! Seems I had not installed the game as an administrator... I did that now and it works.
EDIT - it worked the first time, when I launched it from the installer after it was done installing... however, when I tried to launch it the second time, I get the same bug again.

Unfortunately, your suggestions didn't work, Stuff. The only difference I get is if I try to run this on my admin account my curser actually does become a hour glass. Do you know if there is an Intel equivilant of an AMD Dual Core Optimizer?
In the meantime, I'm going to contact customer support about this.

Sorry for not responding, your posts didn't show up since you didn't respond to me directly . . . =)
@laffer Make sure you also right click the game shortcut, click Properties, click the Compatibility tab and check "Run this program as an administrator". I uncheck "Run this program in compatibility mode for" to start with, especially with Win 7. If the game doesn't work then try the compatibility modes one at a time.
Also check to see if your firewall is not throwing up consent dialogs behind the game window by Alt-Tabbing out of the game. If it is click "Allow" and it will stop blocking the game. I use Comodo and it does that often. I would open a help ticket with GOG as well.
@Thunderstone I don't know of a program like AMD's for intel but . . .
There is a program that sets affinity to a single core if you have a dual core system. Here is a link to a post that gives an example of how to change the game shortcuts target path on the Shortcut tab. There is also a link to download the program. It is free and small.
Basically, you extract the RunFirst.exe and put it in a folder. I put it in a folder under C:\Program Files\Gog.com\RunFirst since I use it with a couple of GOG games and this allows me to just copy and paste from one shortcut to another. You simply take the path to the program "C:\Program Files\Gog.com\RunFirst\RunFirst.exe", add quotes at the beginning and end and insert it into the target path of the game shortcut BEFORE the game path. You need a space between the two paths.
The path for Divine Divinity looks like this -
"C:\Program Files\GOG.com\RunFirst\RunFirst.exe" "C:\Program Files\GOG.com\Divine Divinity\div.exe"
You would have a similar path except using the path for the location of the Runfirst.exe on your system and the path to the Septerra Core exe that already exists in the shortcut. Attached is an image showing where to insert the path to RunFirst in the game shortcut. Because the shortcut cannot be sized, I can't show the whole path. Anyway, RunFirst path first, encased in quotes, space between the two paths, game path as it exists encased in quotes.
If you do not have a dual core system - DO NOT USE THIS, it will not help.
This is not the same as the AMD Dual Core Optimizer, it just sets the affinity to a single core which greatly improves some of the older games ability to run on a multicore system. A sound problem is a good indication that RunFirst might help your game.
When the path is correct, upon clicking the shortcut, you will see a small DOS window followed by the game opening. It only sets the affinity for the game and closes when the game closes.
Hope this helps . . . =)

I'm having the same problem. Im running an AMD Athalon X2 on a laptop, with an NVIDIA graphics card. I have reinstalled the game, making sure to do so as Administrator. I have run the game as an administrator in every compatability mode. I have used the RunFirst app to make it run on one core.
The problem remains the same. I get the little spinny wheel icon, and the game just freezes there. Can anyone help me? I loved this game when I was younger and I would really like to play it again.

after experimenting with some of the solutions posted i tried some stuff of my own and believe to have found a solution i went to C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem copied the qts file pasted it in the septerra core install directory set properties to windows 2003 service pack 1 640 x 480 res disable vis themes and disable desktop compostion and it ran fine