I managed to get Earthsiege 2 to work fine in Windows XP, but it took some doing. I used the application comatiblity toolkit from MS, and the game worked with the windows 95 setting, but it was ridiculously slow. I really only needed three fixes - one for the joystick, one to stop the virual memory error, and one for 256 color graphics. Here's the process for how I got it to work perfectly:

1. In the compatibility Administrator, right-click on "Custom Databases" and select new.

2. right-click on the newly-created database and select "create new" and then "compatibility mode".

3. Find "EmulateJoystick" and "GlobalMemoryStatusLie", and add them (by double-clicking)

4. Enter a name for the compatibility mode (I used "ES2") and click on "OK"

5. Right-click on the database you created in step 1 and select "Create new" then "Application Fix"

6. Enter the name of the application ("Earthsiege 2") and the vendor ("Sierra")

7. Click the "browse" button next to the program file location field, and find the ES.exe file (on my system, it's at c:\sierra\es2\es.exe).

8. Click on "next", then check the "256Color" and "ES2" compatibility modes. Also, if the "Microsoft Windows 95" radio button is selected, change it to the "None" radio button.

9. Click "next", then "next" again, and then click the "auto-generate" button.

10. Finally, click on "Finish". At this point, you should name your database something (right-click and select "rename"), and then save it (save button in the toolbar).

11. Now you should be able to right-click on the database and select install. Windows will now watch for you to execute the ES.exe program and apply the fixes automatically. On my system, it performed perfectly joystick and all.