The task shows up in task manager (more precisely processess), and it changes my profile to win 7 basic but the game itself wont start.
It acts as if the game is running, but it isint.
Had the same issue with the steam version, but was told the GOG version was free of it, so refunded that one and bought the GOG one... only to run into the exact same issue -_-
any known fix?

If your are running this on an Intel HD integrated GPU, that will be the problem. There is supposedly a workaround using WINE, which basically replaces the DLLs you need to run the game, and it should or may work. I have not done this recently though. There was a guy there who actually added to the newer Steam version a sort of hack or version that had a way, I believe, to get around the Intel problem. Although it could also be a problem with Direct Draw and the movie. So read on.

There should be some info on this if you carefully search the Steam forums for the game. May have to search carefully though.

Don't forget to specify which game. In the UFO After Series, there is the original Aftermath, the second and my favorite game Aftershock, and then Afterlight (which used to have a ton of start-up bugs and a buggy tutorial early game).

You should be able to get it to work if you have a regular Video Card, like Nvidia or AMD Radeon series.

But, remember, if your Windows 7 or later OS never had Direct X 9.0c, then you don't truly have complete backwards compatibility. This game was made well before Windows 7, probably XP or earlier.

So, download DirectX 9.0c directly from Microsoft, it is free and it won't confuse your OS, it is perfectly compatible with Direct X 10 and later. But, only DirectX 9.0c has TRUE DESIGNED backwards compatibility for any DirectX 9 or earlier. Later versions don't really have that mindset, so they often fail during this era of games or earlier.

No guarantees. With the UFO After Series of games the old tried and true solution was use a dedicated, slotted Video Card, like from Nvidia or Radeon (AMD). It is possible there is a Voodoo Graphics Wrapper solution as well. I'm not up to speed lately on this. But I will look into getting Aftershock up and running probably in a few weeks on my current back-up computer with the Intel HD.

Anyway, look thru the various Steam forums for the UFO versions. Maybe start from the UFO community page, as there may be two entries for each game. One is the version with no update, the other has the attempt at the update, but it was in a directory. But I'm not on that computer which fritzed out last week or so. Might be a while before I can look all that up, and it is very time consuming unless I'm starting up a game.

Hope this helps guide you somewhat. It is possible also that pcgamingwiki.com may have some info on the games, it often does. Good luck.