I have the original quake from LONG ago and I wanted to install it on my pc. On the cover it says WORKS with DOS 5.0 or higher and windows 95/97. Now when I put the disc in the cdrom drive all it does is open windows media player and play the music tracks. No matter how I try to open it. Someone said on amazon.com that you need to use OpenGL to install and play the game. Is that right? He said that will make it compatible with any OS. No, that's not necessarily correct.

The CD-ROM of the original quake contains the DOS version. this will NOT run- (at least, not easily) on any OS after windows 98/ME.

That being said, however, there are a number of "ports" of the quake SOURCE to various other platforms; this may be what the person was referring to.

a good, basic Windows Port I like is fitzquake. This should work on any OpenGL equipped PC (pretty much any PC with a video card newer then around 10 or so years).

If you have a high-end machine, you can actually get a number of "improved" engines, that also support high-resolution textures.
darkplaces is a popular one.
Joequake is one of the ones I've been using.
Qrack is another excellent one too.

Remember though you aren't limited to just using one of these; the only thing that these programs need from your CD are a few PAK FILES, which essentially CONTAIN the game level data and resources. They don't all have installers, so you might need to manually unzip them and copy the PAK file (PAK1.pak, if memory SERVES) from your CD-ROM to an "ID1" folder within the folder you unzip the port to.I have a very basic PC. Don't ask me specifics, I wont be able to tell you. I know its only about a year old or less. Basic home PC. So could you be please be so kind as to walk me through how I get this game to work please? What are the first few steps?Actually I got it to install!!! You have to go into DOS and select the drive E: then type INSTALL and hit enter. Only problem is that stupid error message about the full screen cannot be supported. WHat does that mean?