This works! Thanks!

yep rennaming WINMM.DLL to BCP WINMM.DLL (because you want to have backups) works : game now starts (i use XP SP 3, Admin rights in compatibility options for Europa.exe) and i am able to get into tutorial.

Spot on! EU1 is running

It's weird that people are saying that EU1 isn't working on W10. 3 days ago I install W10 Enterprise 21H2 on my Sager gaming laptop.

My hardware:
i7-7700K
Nvidia GTX 1080
64GB Corsair Vengeance RAM

Surprisingly, the game launches just fine with no compatibility settings applied. Which is different from my previous results the last time I tested it. But the music doesn't work, which I expected. So I applied my own fix that I posted about some time ago:

https://www.gog.com/forum/europa_universalis_series/fix_for_music_not_working_and_widescreen_in_europa_universalis_1original

I do believe that using dgVoodoo with EU1 is optional, but in my opinion it helps. DxWnd would probably also work. The main reason that alot of old games don't work on W10, is because of graphics issues. 3rd party programs like these help to mitigate that.

UPDATED Link to download "Europa Universalis (GOG) fix.rar":

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Erd3LamSkikk62DXZ6deo8sRfiiB7qB/

Instructions for using either a DxWnd fix or a Win10 native fix are included in the "_SETUP Europa Universalis (GOG).txt" text file inside the archive.

I love you man - it works perfectly, music and all!

Bump

Well, I don't know what happened from january to this day, but the archive is broken. It downloads all 53MBs but I get an error dialog saying the archive is damaged or in an unknown format.

However, I no longer need it. After reading various threads on this forum about the issue, I made some tests by using the compatibility mode tab. The only option you guys have to check is "Disable fullscreen optimizations"*, no need to set Windows XP SP 2 or 3. It works even if you don't delete winmm, the game will launch correctly both from the original exe in its folder and the Play button in GOG Galaxy. I'm on Windows 10 Pro x64. The only drawback is that you still have no music.

*Please note that in another thread somrebody wrote "Disable fullscreen" only, so I misunderstood the first time I have read it because other people was mentioning DxWnd as well. But when I applied that fullscreen optimizations thing in europa.exe properties, the game finally launched with its original files. Hope this helps.

Hey everyone, no offense to sedryntyros but please bear in mind that by replacing provided .dll you will actually run some code which is not created by game developer. Virustotal has some issues reported with one of the files
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/b493840e1f62641723d92575e9e7c1aedecb65ece2185097aba5a7731c533ecd/detection , but even despite that I would rater play music from game folder in background rather than run unknown code. https://y.yarn.co/00e70166-a00f-4531-80b5-04525779e773_text.gif

Here's the source of the "unknown code":
https://github.com/mohzy83/ogg-winmm

It's the source that GOG themselves used to create their own, less-functional dll. The original game developers have absolutely nothing to do with coverting the CDDA audio tracks to playable audio files; GOG did all that but they never updated their version of the winmm.dll to be compatible with Windows 10. So no offense to nowkarol, but I think his tinfoil hat needs an adjustment, lol.

The archive I posted is still working and accessible for those who want to use it.

Does anyone have a solution for windows 11 or is that a bridge too far?

EDIT: for anyone still looking, I have found the answer. YES, it can run on win11, as detailed here:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/windows-10-11-compatibility-guide.1437858/

I'm sure DxWnd would work as well for this. You just have to be aware that depending on your monitor's resolution and the video upscaling method the text in the game may be almost unreadable. It uses a pretty terrible font that's best viewed with integer scaling.

I've put together a DxWnd proxy that I find superior to the dgVoodoo2 approach as it allows you to click outside the game window without crashing the game and also reduce the CD-ROM music volume which is too loud compared to the game sound fx by default. I'm waiting on the next DxWnd official release to share my stuff, though, as that release integrates a MCI_PAUSE bug fix I helped gho find (needed for the Music Off/On in-game option).

*UPDATE*

ghotik is taking a while to put out the latest DxWnd, so I decided to upload a fix using DxWnd v2.05.93 (the last DxWnd version where MCI_PAUSE worked correctly for this game):

Link to download "Europa Universalis (GOG) fix.rar":

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Erd3LamSkikk62DXZ6deo8sRfiiB7qB/

Instructions for using either a DxWnd fix or a Win10 native fix are included in the "_SETUP Europa Universalis (GOG).txt" text file inside the archive.