Well, let's give it a try. However it's going to be a long post... I thank you blood piggy, for your patience
1- Created exult folder for it's contents
2- Exult is told to look for U7 and serpent isle in C:/oldgames/Ultima7 and c:/oldgames/serpent
3- Launched Exult: it says "Could not find the data files for BG or SI, please edit the configuration file and restart exult
4- I opened stderr and it look like this: "Trailing slash in path: "data\"
...compensating, but go complain to Colourless anyway
Unable to open device: MMSYSTEM004 **Le périphérique spécifié est en cours d'utilisation. Attendez qu'il soit libre, puis essayez Ã* nouveau.**
Failure to initialize midi playing thread"
** translation = The specified peripheral is in use. Wait until it is free, then try again.
5- I also opened stdout and it here it does : "Exult version 1.2
Built at: Jun 12 2004 03:31:19
Compile-time options: NO_SDL_PARACHUTE, HAVE_ZIP_SUPPORT
Compiler: Microsoft C/C++ Compiler, version: 13.0.9466
Platform: Windows 98 SE Version 4.10 Build 2222
Exult path settings:
Data : data\.
Digital music : data\\music
1 Midi Devices Detected
Listing midi devices:
-1: MIDI Mapper
0: Synthétiseur logiciel Microsoft
Using device -1: MIDI Mapper
Music player: Internal Win32 Midiout Midi Player for Exult and Pentagram.
Black Gate : not found (c:\oldgames\ultima7\static\endgame.dat)
exult_bg.flx : found
Serpent Isle : not found (c:\oldgames\serpent\static\sispeech.spc)
exult_si.flx : found"
I hope this doesn't look discouraging.