Hi there, I was experiencing the following crash with RCT3 on Windows 8.1 and managed to get it fixed pretty simply, so I thought I'd share how I managed it here. It might make me sound like a numpty but hopefully it'll help someone else here.

Basic specs:
Windows 8.1 64-bit
Core i3-4130
8GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 8470 graphics

I was having trouble with RCT3 refusing to start. The screen resolution would change but then no part of the game would start and it would crash to desktop. The crash log in the game's directory stated the crash was due to the following:

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Unhandled exception "Access Violation" in "C:\GOG Games\RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum\RCT3plus.exe" at 0023:006393a0
Read from location fffffffc caused an access violation
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SOLUTION:
After a bit of trying the solution turned out to be simple enough - The latest AMD graphics drivers. I know there'll probably be a lot of groans at me not trying that first, but I think I'm not alone in assuming that updating my drivers from a 2013 release to a 2014 one wouldn't change anything about the workings of a 10 year old game, but it seems I was wrong. Hopefully someone else can learn from this too.

For reference, the driver I've ended up with is AMD version 14.100.0.0 dated 17 April 2014.

Also, it's worth mentioning that before the graphics driver change I downloaded, extracted and installed 'DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010)' from Microsoft as recommended by another post on this forum. I'm not sure if they were required to fix it (the game only ultimately worked after the graphics driver was updated) but you could always try that if driver updates alone don't solve any similar problem you're having.

Hope this helps someone!

It is not unlikely that a new driver fixes a problem with how a relatively new OS interacts with an older game. Win8.1 is a late 2013 release, so the drivers you were previously using likely weren't intended for 8.1 or they were the first available for 8.1, making them likely to have issues with the OS. Especially for games (or applications in general) that were designed for previous versions of Windows.

While 8 & 8.1 are very close to each other in terms of functionality and implementation, I'd wager that several core components have seen noticable changes to their inner workings between the two.