Frequently when viewing either the mission briefing or the in-game introductory sweep there is no sound playing, and the game apparently hangs, although I can skip the briefings as normal by pressing ESC. It's just like a video playback that's put on pause.
Any solutions for this?
I'm playing on XP.

Yep, it works in Win7, but I had the original problem on XP.

I had the same problem too.
Just set the commandos executable file to "win95 compatibility mode" and the game will work fine with full sounds.

To clarify the pseudo-hang experience: the game is not stuck; it believes the audio is playing correctly so it's waiting for it to finish. :-) I've had this same problem. I'm running Vista x64.

Agreed, it seems random; sometimes I only get the intro the first time I play a level. Odd.

Setting compatibility mode to Win 95 did the trick for me!

Thanks, bro!
CaioToOn!

I'm using win7 home premium 64bit.

I tried to set it to Win95 and run as admin. When i now start a mission from the beginn, the text-intro will be read out and my mission goals will be explained . Also the ingame music is played.

But if i save the game (quick save) the sound mission music disappeared. :( Reloading the save-game won't bring the music back.

Any ideas?

Edit: The ingame music disappers always after few seconds. So maybe thats totally normal. Let's see, if the next mission will start with sound in intro and briefing.

I have the same problem as you running win7 64bit.
The intro to each mission just hangs, and I have to press escape to get on with the game. It's quite annoying actually, as it takes a lot away from the game including tips on what to do and such.

I hope gog will look into it..

Meanwhile I did what this user suggested and it works flawlessly now.

I did this too, I'm using windows xp. And used compatibility mode windows 2000. Works perfect now.
I was experiencing all of the problems mentioned above plus glitching forien language/Stephen Hawkins voices, but now thanks to this ace advice all is as it should be.

Cheers

It happens to me too on Windows 8 (DON'T ASK, it comes pre-installed on my new laptop). Guess I'll give that Windows 95 compatibility a try, or else I'll try to run it under Linux later on.

Thanks for the help guys, Windows 95 compatibility on Windows 8 seems to work like a charm.