I've tried many times on and off to get Still Life to run under Windows 8. In an act of desperation, I emailed GOG tech support who basically told me that it was incompatible with Win8. So I tried some thing new... and found a solution that works for me, anyway, under Win8 x64 Pro. Thought I'd share the news.

1. Oracle VM VirtualBox. Open source. Supports DirectX (!!). www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

2. WinXP or Win7 as the operating system for the virtual machine created by VirtualBox. In ISO format. You will still need to activate whatever operating system you use.

3. Once you have the VM up and running, make sure you install the vboxguest additions.iso. It will already be loaded in your VM's virtual DVD/CD.

4. I installed DirectX 9.0 runtime for good measure (available for download at microsoft).

5. Install Still Life. It was up and running immediately for each of the 4 VMs I created.

6. Enjoy!! :)

I have attached a screenshot showing the VirtualBox settings I used.

It's also possible to try the inofficial "Still Life Vista Patch" in Windows 8. It solved the problem in my case.

Thanks, that worked for me on Win 8.1 x64. Much less cumbersome than running it in a VM!