5 days a stranger - mouse issues
 

I have download the game and adjusted the settings as much as I could, but no matter what, I can't play.The game loads and works fine, but I cannot move my mouse. Sometimes I'm able to, but it lags immensely and stops working, so I can't do anything.
I'm on Windows 7 with a Gateway laptop and I cannot run the game in DosBOX. I run it with the .exe.

Try using a virtual machine with an older version of Windows installed in it - XP is recommended in this case. Microsoft Virtual PC, VMWare, Bochs etc.

5days is made with AGS. It's a Windows game, so you shouldn't use DOSBox. Out of the box it tries to set the video to 320x200, which was already ludicrous when the game came out, and may be of course not supported in many modern systems.

I think running the setup program included with the game, and choosing a different video mode that's supported by your hardware and OS, should solve the problem.

Of course you can even get this video mode supported in an older (virtual) machine, but I think the game should work on any Windows version, if you run the setup program first and change the video.

I have tried adjusting video settings, but there aren't many options other than the resolution. I tried the rest and nothing works.
As for trying it with a Virtual Machine, I would love to, but I am a complete idiot when it comes to it. I downloaded Bochs and no matter how I look at the tutorial, I can't figure it out at all. All I want is to run the game under Win XP using it, but how? I find no mention of that in the tutorials.
If someone could point me to something for complete beginners, that'd help.

But did you try changing the resolution or not?

Virtual PC tutorial: http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=28390