I recently picked up a few new games and decided to see if they could run in win10, one " Beetle Buggin' " for win9x did seem to work although the Xbox controller seemed to behave randomly. I'm sure it will work If I try a D-input gamepad. Being a Win9x game it did need the cd inside to run, which caused a surprising amount of vibration in this tower shell. Since I've been using GOG and getting to play more and more of my vintage games in win10, I have come to like the convenience. Unfortunately a lot of the system tools from boot loaders to virtual dvd and floppy drives that I used in all my systems from win98 to win7 64bit do not work in windows 10. In fact, some I am unable even to complete the install process. I used to have all my 98 games ripped to my hard drive after installing, then I'd mount the ISO through MagicISO and just swap the images whenever I wanted to change games, as this extends the life of my disks, and my cd drive as well as keeping me from flipping through books of disks. Sadly I can't install that virtual dvd drive in win10 it seems. GOG has managed to patch a lot of win98 games to not need CD's, so I was wondering is there a generic tool, that often works, or are they actually examining code to patch each one independently?

i do know that for a lot of popular games you might find cracked exe's online but i never encountered a generic program made to do just that

maybe with the a.i. rage going on some obscure person will find something

Right, there is nothing generic, every game will be different (heck that’s the point of GOG, they do the hard work getting these things patched and running for you).
If you want to run your games without cd, then you will need what is called nocd patches. Be very careful going down that root and ensure you virus scan in multiple software before using. I imaged all my physical copies many years back, and whilst I have since rebought a lot off GOG I still have a lot.
Use this for loading disc images:
https://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/
It’s great, been using it for years. It won’t run protected discs though, but to install from is fine.
Also, some games have been remade, engine reimplements, patches etc. For instance there is the dhwem doom 3 engine reimplement which you copy in your data and then don’t need the disc, great stuff.

So it’s very much a case by case I am afraid, I still have never seen a nocd or patch for You Are Dead, I still have the physical.

That's like asking if there is a generic way to heal every disease in existence. Short answer: no. Long answer: nooooooooooooo.

If you want complete autonomy from any CD/DVD physical or virtual you'll have to find a specific crack for each and everyone of them. That is a) technically illegal and b) you're prone to catch the odd malware/trojan/virus along the way if you're not very careful.
If you just don't want to deal with the physical medium, creating a disc image and loading it in a virtual drive is somewhat more generic. Most virtual drive software can emulate a range of copy protection methods but it's still not guaranteed to work every time. Additionally decent cloning tools and virtual drive software with good emulation usually don't come for free. Depending on where you live their use might even be illegal.

For some of the DRMs of that time, I remember there were generic programs to remove them, and they worked quite well. Unsecurom and Unsafedisc, if my memory doesn't fail me... If they have a different DRM, you'll need to find a specific crack for it.

fun game! though I don't remember getting too far :)

There's no generic tool, and you usually need specific "NoCD" for games you own, however gamecopyworld.com is the usual resource for that stuff including the game you mentioned (Beetle Buggin' aka Beetle Crazy Cup in some regions). As always, run it through a virus check & backup your data before as a precaution, and make sure the version number matches your game & language (or you could have to reinstall the game), though the vast majority are working & clean.

Plus, Windows 10 blocks some of the commonly used copy protection methods (also on cloned CD/DVD images), in which case finding a working noCD crack is pretty much the only way to play such games on Windows 10.

EDIT: Well, ok, in this case the copy protection seems to work, as the original CD works...

If you only need ISO image mounting for games with a simple disc-check copy protection then WinCDEmu, which nightcraw1er mentioned, works fine under Windows 10. Magic ISO used to work great back in the day, but unfortunately it hasn't been updated to run under modern versions of Windows.

The method to remove more complex disc checks will vary game-by-game, and there is no universal toolkit. You can start by looking up the game on PCGamingWiki (www.pcgamingwiki.com). They will often list whether there are any safe methods to by-pass an old game's copy protection checks - especially if such methods are necessary to get the game running properly on a modern system.

Some virtual CD tools can emulate certain copy protection systems. I seem to recall Alcohol 120 and Daemon Tools could bypass many versions of Securom, which was one of the more popular copy protection systems back in the Win9x days. I haven't used either of those in many years, but it looks like they're still being actively developed. They're both commercial products now, but they either have a time-limited demo or ad-supported free version you can try. (Again, I haven't used them in over a decade, so I can't vouch for their current quality.)

Aside from that, your only other option would be to hunt down individual NO-CD cracks for each game (and run them through every anti-malware scanner possible).

It might not matter for the OP, but for other people reading this:
PCGamingWiki often only mentions the copy protection used in the US published game (It depends on which game). There's a tool out there (I forgot the name) that will detect the used copy protection.
If you value your time, it's worth trying to find the full (cracked) game. (I only offer this advice to people that already own a retail copy.)

Standard tools, and names, Awesome, Thanks. From what people are saying about windows 10 messing with the disks, these may be needed now.

OOOHH a standard tool, I hope the protection is just a bool value.

A lot of talk of copy protection here. I am talking about windows 9X games here, some even mention win3.1 as compatible. I actually had a game that on first run, stopped and insisted that a backup be made and used so the kids don't destroy the original disk, those were the days. I'm pretty sure most games needed the disks then because nothing really was installed to the hdds as they were often just 4gb,8gb, or 10gb hdds back then. I can only ever recall one game disk that I couldn't create a iso from to run in a virtual drive, the general mills Operation disk with 500 free hours of AOL. I blame AOL. I'd rather not deal with individual patches and the sketchy sites that tend to offer them, so I guess I'm looking for a convenient free virtual DVD drive that works in windows 10. I liked how MagicISO showed up as a drive in "My Computer" even when not having a iso mounted, not like some of the other disappearing reappearing always a different drive letter alternatives I tried before choosing that one. It was simple, right click on iso in game system folder, select mount to E:DVD. I think a lot of the copy protection stuff came later in the XP days. Most of my XP games install to hdd so the disk isn't needed until you want to reinstall. Maybe I was just more tech savvy than I realized to bypass all the trouble. Maybe GOG can revive MagicISO, and the virtual floppy drive component, I forgot the name of.

This particular games runs, I think It just doesn't properly understand a xbox 360 xinput device. I've played several games so much that the disks became worn out, one the center ring started splitting leading to a krazy glue patch job followed by a grumpy trip to the game store a week later.

The Daemon Tools suite seems to offer all sorts of mounting and virtualization, but almost everything useful was locked behind the pay wall. Maybe I'll get it for Black Friday, as it seems it might also be useful with my virtual machines as well.

I forgot there is some sort of ISO mounting built into windows 8 onward, but I suspect it probably messes with win9x routines it doesn't recognize, or every DRM they could think of.

I'll look into WinCDEmu, and www.pcgamingwiki.com

I found a link that claims to offer a solution to make Magic Disk, the freeware virtual drive part of Magic ISO to run in win10 from 5 years back. Apparently the problem is a combination of an unsigned driver, and discontinued support for a windows installer format. Steps had to be repeated with each major windows update.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/all/magicdisc-windows-10/37bf89d3-668b-4fa1-aa34-2f8c48ef8919

Thanks for the advise everyone. I have a more direction as to where to look into now.

I would avoid daemon tools, they used to be the go to software, but then they changed. The software got loads of adware sand such like added in. I stopped using them a few years back. For 95 games, they may be 16bit so you may have issues unpacking them even. Have a search on the internet for each one, you will likely find a working version somewhere.