Hey guys. I am nowhere near a hacker or a computer wiz but a couple of things I discovered after getting this working.
You need an IDE drive. If you try to use a SATA drive it will BSOD upon bootup with a Stop error code because it's looking for IDE drivers. You can change it to use SATA by loading the registry in the drive and changing some values.
You need a Realtek onboard chipset.
You need to replace the abhloader.exe in the original PC/aliens/DATA with the one that comes by itself in the archive, that will stop the game from complaining about the usbkey upon first run.
Once you get into the desktop, you just execute unlock.bat in the cabinet's document folder in order to modify the drive like a normal drive if not anything you try to install will not go well. Once you execute that, it will reboot and now you are able to have free reign.
Get a flash drive and get your download net4.0, wic_enu_x86.exe, and then winxp sp3, drivers for your Realtek card and drivers for your graphics card. Also pick up ppjoy4-4-8-6. The game takes joystick input to control the gun cursors and uses all three mouse buttons for Fire, Flame Thrower and Grenade launcher.
So insert your flash drive then install:
1-Wic_enu_x86.exe
2-Net Framework 4.0
3-Sp3 (don't worry, it's compatible with XP Embedded)
4-ATI or Nvidia drivers
5-Realtek drivers
6-PPjoy
AND MAKE SURE YOU FORCE VSYNC IN YOUR VIDEO CARDS CONTROL CENTER.
Go to ppjoys folder and click on the mouseppjoy.exe, then minimize it.
Now start the game and get into the service menu by pressing 5 or 6 and Calibrate your guns in the system tests menu.
Coins are Lctrl or Lshift, 1 is Start.
Windows 7.....
The goal should be to run this game without having to waste an hdd.
So the game is located in the root of the HD, PC folder.
If you put it in your root of your drive, the game will start but will come up with a "Unable to open AVI frame"....this is most likely because you don't have divx codec installed, but the real problem comes after that, as you get a wallpaper that says "Searching for Dongle"
Now in the windows folder on the aliens HD image there is a folder with the Aladdin/Hasp dongle files. There is also a registry entry under enumerator/HASP with a whole bunch of binary numbers. I know there is a HASP dongle emu but you need to load a .dng file in order for it to work.
If someone can eliminate the dongle problem, with installing some programs from the aliens hdd that the game needs I think it can run off of other win os.