I have SE IV + patch 7 working perfectly on my Win95 machine, but I had to do a clean reinstall to get it working. I think my older installs were partially corrupted; the patch claimed that the first install that I tried it on wasn't a valid Version, and the second install accepted the patch but crashed during game setup while trying to load a race portrait on the Add New Empire page.
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Cap'n Q
My first mod!
Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"