From experience, I declare you wrong.
It's hard.

I know, I was just reporting results and a fix for those would be nice as I have to kill explorer to run them right.

About SC. You need to run it in 98/ME compatibility, as an administrator and have the Screen Resolution window open. I don't know why that would work, but hell, it does.

It's about the strangest fix I've heard of. It's one small step away from requiring eye of newt and three hops to the left before being shaken vigorously.

Now thats IS INTERESTING! You have been blessed with rep!
One question, though:
On which version is ths based? DOS/Win? I find the Windows version much superior due to tweaked AI.

I've been looking for something like this for ages! I wonder why it's never shown up when I googled.
Unfortunately, it crashes on me right after startup :-(

I've always thought it was ridiculous that you have a better chance of running old games on linux (using wine) than on windows. I've been amazed that no-one (including gog) has stepped up to make a decent wine-like old-d3d emulator. You'd think that there would be enough demand.
Of course, there's a few wrappers around (mostly for glide) but they all seem hit and miss, and there's no one big project.
When I heard about wine for windows it seemed like the perfect answer, but last time i tried it it was way too much hassle and not very successful. Don't have enough free time to mess with it now, but i hope it's improving.
NB/ The problem for a lot of old d3d games seems to be the framerate. Yet as most wrappers seem to be built for console emulation, they all seem to have options to increase the framerate, but there seems none to limit it. That would seem to be the way to solve a lot of problems..

It's based on the Windows ver I believe.
Should work fine. Make sure you downloaded the complete package and then the updates.
Screenshots:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=25254&highlight=keeperfx
ah stupid quote system.

Did You edit the ini file with resolutions? It crashed on me too, then i changed them.. WORKS LIKE A CHARM! :D
Now, i that my obsession of running DK on modern systems is over, i need to find another goal...
Yeah, the AI seems to work well [IMPs work well].
I'm about to experience DK in 800x600, thanks a bunch! :D
[edit]
The only thing lacking is MP now.

What did you change them to? Can you post your INI file here? Also, did it crash for you in the same place as it did for me? Mine showed the original splash screen, then the KeeperFX splash screen, and then it crashed to desktop with a "program has stopped working" message.
I take it that's one of your resolutions then, but I'd still like the entire INI file. Did you have to do anything else, like mess with compatibility settings or fiddle with special settings in your video drivers?

No, mine crashed on loading the map. But there are two separete lines for resolutions, one for the frontend, and one for the ingame.
I've changed
FRONTEND_RES=320x200x8 320x200x8 640x480x8
to:
FRONTEND_RES=640x480x8 640x480x8 640x480x8
and
INGAME_RES=320x200x8 640x400x8 1024x768x8
to:
INGAME_RES=800x600x8
in keeperfx.cfg.
Note, You can have mutliple resolutions, which can be changes with ALT+R.
It's all in the readme.;>
The .ini is actually .cfg, my mistake. ;P
When You unpack the full version, You have the keeperfx.cfg file, that's where it is.
I didn't fiddle with compatibility at all, worked just like that.
The game also logs stuff, so You can check the keeperfx.log file and check for errors. Mine was an error about the games inability to work in 320x200, so i tweaked the resolutions. ;D

GoG already includes custom made ddraw.dll files with several games to prevent some of the mentioned problems, don't they?

Okay, this is really weird. I tried all sorts of resolutions, and it kept crashing in the same place. The last entry in the log was that it was drawing the first option in the menu.
Then I tried inserting my DK Gold CD. No change.
I started adding command line options. No change.
I finally added the -nosound option. Hey presto, it worked. I went out and removed all command line options except the nosound one, and started it again. It still worked. So I played the first level. Worked like a charm, but naturally without any sound. I figured that's what did it, but I wanted to check again that the log didn't mention sound at all, so I went out and removed the nosound option and started the game again... And it still worked, only this time with sound.
So the only thing I can think of is that there is some strange logic in the code that makes the game crash if the sound is on, and no "continue" state is found.
But now I can play DK1 properly again for the first time in years! YESSSSS!!!!!
*victory dance*

For me, it runs fine in 1024x768. And it looks good doing it! :-D
For years, my copy of DK Gold has been mocking me from the shelf next to my computer. Now I plan to make up for lost time.

Polish-work-in-progress-coding.. ;P
Since i didn't have this bug, You could email the creator and report it! :)
I prefer 'lower resolutions' in games. With higher resolutions the GUI doesn't scale in some games, and i hate little HUDs.;P In other games, they just end up to crispy, Mafia 2 would be a good example [looks neat in lower resolutions, if one can live with the blur], but we're already a bit off topic.
Well, i played it a bit over a year ago, just to be reminded tha the game has this challange based campaign, which i'm not really fond of. But perhaps i'll finish it again now.. in 800x600! :D
Wish i had boxed DK. ;>
Time to play it and prepare for Dungeons!