Werewolf1021: As some of you know, FSW has an annoying sound crackle problem when characters speak in game. This was bothering me a lot and I decided to mess around to fix it.

I ran the FSW launcher (the shortcut created by GOG) in compatibility mode with "XP service pack 2". This fixed the sound crackle, but gave an annoying faux-windowed mode that had the border of a windowed game with the windows 8 task bar translucent but visible on the game screen. This was even more annoying than the sound crackling.

Dinking around with the settings in the properties of the launcher, i changed the "Run" option in the Shortcut section of the properties and changed it to Minimized.

After I did this, the game would launch straight to the task bar. I would then click on the game and it would run with normal fullscreen. No border, no taskbar, and (best of all) no sound crackling.

I'm running:
Windows 8 (not 8.1)
Intel i7 3770k
GTX 660 TI

Hope this helps some people!