ikrananka: I'll try to help, although I only have the retail boxed version. But it is working fine for me under Windows 10 and it also worked fine for me under Windows 7 (both 64-bit).
1. First, please check which version is installed by the GOG installer. Go to the installation folder, right click on the cc2.exe file and select Properties. Then look on the Details tab and under "Product Version" what does it say? The final version that Microsoft released is 2.0b and that hopefully is what GOG is selling.
2. It sounds like display settings may be causing a problem so let's try manually setting the game resolution. What is the native resolution of your monitor? Mine is 3440x1440, but I find the game looks best when set to a lower resolution. I set it to 1024x768. You can do this once the game has started, but seeing as you can't even get to that point this will instead involve editing the Registry. So only do this if you're comfortable doing this, and also make sure that you back up the registry beforehand. Start RegEdit and search for the Close Combat game settings. The retail Microsoft location is here : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft Games\Close Combat\2.00
Set "ScreenX" to a value of 1024 and "ScreenY" to a value of 768.
You might also want to change the "Launched" setting from 0 to 1. I believe this forces the game to automatically skip the intro videos which may bypass your issue.
3. Also, it is necessary to run the game in compatibility mode, mine is set to "Windows XP (Service Pack 3)". It is NOT necessary to run the program as an administrator or to select any of the other compatibility settings.
Hey, I tried what you have suggested without joy.
I can confirm the version is correct and I was running in compatability mode as described.
I can set the game to skip the videos without launching but this had no effect.
I tried adjusting the resolution to 1024 & 860 as described and edited the registry again no change still the same crash.