I have vista, unfortunately, and just bought the complete utlima 7 series and it does not work. Serpent isle loads up the intro but after that it just stops. Is there any settings i need to change with Vista to get it working?

Did you install it as admin? I have Vista 64 and no problems running part one or part two.

Try installing as an admin in any folder besides the Program Files folder. That's usually a quick Vista fix.

Yeah not being the Administrator causes problems.

Go to your Control Panel > User Accounts and click on Change Account Type and change your account to Administrator.

Everything you run then will be the same as choosing run as administrator.

I would recommend Exult (http://exult.sourceforge.net/). Like Dosbox, Exult lets you to play both Ultima 7 and Serpent's Isle on Windows 7. I actually like Exult. Ultima 7 runs MUCH better on XP than through Dosbox.

By the way, under Vista or Windows 7, if you install the game outside of the protected folders like "Program Files", it is much easier to tinker with it (modify configuration etc.) and you don't need to play around with virtualstore)

So I strongly recommend to install the game under c:\games\ folder or something similar