Has anyone managed to get X-Wing 98 or Tie Fighter 98 working on Windows 10 as yet? So far I have only had success with the old DOS versions with which I am unable to adjust joystick sensitivity. So far I have tried all available compatibility settings (pretty much everything else has worked in the Windows 7 compatibility mode - some better than in Windows 7 native) and what happens in every case is that the program starts as a background task and I can not alt+tab over to it or force it into the foreground. I have been unable to find a configuration file I could edit or check settings.

Any suggestions?

These rather old games are able to run on modern OS (Windows Vista, 7) thanks to what is known as the "Application Compatibility Toolkit" (also take a look at the attached screenshot).
Long story short, as Windows naturally evolved it stopped using deprecated features or functions that weren't secure (vulnerable to exploits). Therefore, old applications that relied on these no longer worked. The solution was to emulate and "trick" the application into thinking that those features/functions are still available via the Compatibility Toolkit.
To give an example, here is the description of one of the fixes:
"MapMemoryB0000Some applications require that a block of memory be mapped at B0000 as it is on Windows 9x. This compatibility fix will map a block of memory at the B0000 address for the application. Applies to: Windows 95, Windows 98"
Still following along :)?
Enter Windows 8, 8.1 and 10. Although similar at a first glance, what used to work on Windows 7 is no longer, due to the same situation described above.

Back to our Compatibility Toolkit. GOG also installs a compatibility database (the one seen in the attached screenshot).
My feeling is that in Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 it's not installed properly. Mainly because there is a new version 6.0 of the Compatibility Toolkit that works only on Windows 8 and above. Whereas the previous version 5.6 only works on Windows 7 and below.
What you can try is to install the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows® 8 that includes version 6 of the Toolkit.
Afterwards you should check if under the "Installed Databases" you have the "GOG.com Star Wars xxxxxxxx" database (again, check the attached screenshot).
If not, try to manually create a database containing the same fixes.

Phew, that was long...

Different person, but looking for a solution. I can confirm that renaming winmm.dll allowed me to load the game. Hopefully GOG will be able to get the CD-ROM music working with Windows 10.

Thanks athanatos875 for posting your message.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have only tried this with TIE Fighter at present but so far it only comes up with a windows screen saying this application has stopped working. I will see if I can make this work, if so I will consider making a step by step guide for the community because I know that there are others who can not run these games.

These worked for Tie Fighter and X-wing, but not XvT, has anyone had any success there? X-Wing Alliance ran fine with no changes.

I don't have Windows 10 but you can probably copy Microsofts native Winmm.dll to the game folders and rename it to Win32.dll. On a 64 bit OS it's located in C:\Windows\SysWOW64.

Would like to report that this worked, I did receive an error when launching the game about Audio Cd not detected, but I clicked OK and it let me play anyways.

I am having the same issue. I brought over wimm.dll from the windows.old folder and it did not complain but will not play those .ogg files. I am more worried about winmm.dll not being upgraded on other games from GOG - as the slick web store is starting to seduce me into wanting to buy other titles.

For now I can settle on the DOS version for XWING as I like assigning the wingmen alot for some reason. Any update on this issue from GOG would be greatly appreciated. As others have noted, this is a niche issue I would imagine, although some of the best customers probably are technical types who would be using Windows 10 TP.

The source code for the Winmm.dll GOG uses is publicly available (https://github.com/hifi/ogg-winmm). It might just be a matter of compiling it with a version of Visual Studio that suppports Windows 10 (currently it doesn't) but you should probably direct your question at GOG support.

I can confirm this works as well.

I copied the Winmm.dll from C:\Windows\SYsWOW64 to C:\GOG Games\STAR WARS - X-Wing (1998) and was able to get the game to run.

Thank You athanatos875!! You Sir, are my hero!
I couldn't get Outlaws to work & this worked like a charm!! Thank you (How do you even discover this stuff?)
Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight will now boot, but still getting the black screen in game - UI is visiable, but nothing else. Any ideas?

Thanks teleguy for finding an alternative fix, and thank you The_Capn!

Glad you got some of the games to work. I only found the fix after wondering why the Steam version of JKII was working but not GOG's. Then I just messed with the .dlls until it worked, and then found it working with other games :)

This is probably the wrong forum for JKII questions, but have you tried the dgvoodoo fix and other various fixes listed in the JKII GOG forum?

I've developed a launcher application that restores the CD soundtrack to applications that use the ogg-winmm library (winmm.dll in GOG game folders). So far successfully tested with X-Wing 98 and HoMM2.

Just completing my testing, I'll release it shortly.

Thanks just got diamond eyes in X-wing 1998. Would like to actually finish the whole game for once.