Someone tried to post a link to the WCnews article on remedies to fix the issues that people can have crop up with this release in another thread but sadly it just redirects to the GOG forums.

Now since the DVD version of the game required exact hardware to work sadly even GOG can't get it to run at 100% on every possible set up.

From WCnews - But if your having issues guys try the following remedies and see if anything helps.

Probably the most common issue people are having is that the game and video plays but they get no sound in the cutscenes. To fix this download and install AC3filter.

If you get audio and no picture, then you likely need an mpeg 2 decoder. Please note that Windows Vista and 7 Home and Starter editions *DO NOT* come with DVD software pre-installed. To fix this you can simply download and unzip mpeg2dec into your WC4 directory. Then run register.bat (as administrator).

In the event you have neither picture nor audio, or the "missing movie" error, you can apply both of the above solutions, or if you want a one-step solution, codec packs such as K-lite and CCCP will work. Most of the codec packs include an AC3 decoder, so you don't need to install AC3 filter as well. The advantage of K-lite over CCCP is that it should make it easier to diagnose codec issues. The K-Lite Codec Tweak Tool shows all codecs available in the system and allows you to enable / disable individual codecs.

In some cases, players have been unable to get the game running no matter what codecs they install (the game simply will not initialize). In these instances the likely culprit is your firewall software. Either disable your firewall and antivirus while first running the game or create an exception for WC4DVD.exe to solve this issue. Some player have noted that they had to even go so far as to completely remove their firewall program before it would let them install the game correctly.

There have been a few instances of people running Windows 8 getting the 'Virtual Protect' error on start-up. In this case, this should be solved by setting the compatibility mode of WC4DVD.exe to Windows 95 or 98.

Some people have experienced frame rate issues. This may be due to CPU affinity. Basically the game wants to use a specific core. In our tests this was only an issue on a EEEPC laptop running a multi-core ATOM processor. In any case, the GOG version of the game was created prepared to read an "affinity.cfg" file. Setting affinity to CPU 1 helps achieve a higher frame rate (from 21fps to 24fps, which is WC4's hardcoded maximum). To do this, create a text file in your WC4 directory and name it 'affinity.cfg'. Simply enter into the file the number of the core that should be assigned to the game. For example, if you have a dual core processor values 0 and 1 are valid, other values are ignored.

Other generic troubleshooting suggestions: Make sure your video driver version and DirectX version are up to date.

And now, the don'ts: *DO NOT* overwrite mpeg2.dll or dxmci.dll in your WC4 folder with older ones from Gulikoza's estimable patches. Some people on other message boards have been suggesting this. Do not do it. You will break your install. GOG's version is built with the original dxmci patch as a starting point, but it has been heavily modified. Overwriting these files will require you to do a fresh install of the game.

Source - Wing commander 4 GOG release fixes WCnews

Edit:

Okay since I'm sure some people are going to come here or had already asked but these things are currently unfixable and have always been present in this version of the game so please don't bother GOG suppourt about it as they can't help you.

1. The subtitles in the DVD version are broken/not implemented this is a issue from the original DVD release of the game for whatever reason despite having the files the subtitles do not show and barring GOG getting their hands on the source code and using it to find a way to patch this problem out which given the age of the game is doubtful your just either going to have to live with it or just not play sorry guys blame the Origin/EA team who coded this version of the game.

2. There is no sound effects during the transition scene, again this is a bug in the DVD version that never got corrected after the original release back in 95/96(I may be wrong on the exact year of it's release) so unless someone coming up with a patch that adds the audio for these scenes from the CD version it's something you will have to deal with sorry.


From awesomead:

For those with the Sound but no picture issue if you have multiple monitors your secondary monitor may be causing the issue so try this:

look in your Video card settings and there may be video passthrough options for forcing DVD and such to an externally connected TV. Changing these settings may help, or as above you can just disable the seconary screen.

That's nice, but what I am most interested is getting the subtitles to work properly. I used to have the CD version of WC4, and subtitles worked beautifully. Now, I'd like to have the same experience with the GOG version of WC4. I've sent a message to GOG tech support, but I never got a response from them.

What a shame not to be able to play this fine game!

I'm still having issues getting the game to display videos. I've tried the mpeg2dec and my graphics card and direct x are up to date and I'm still getting blank videos. I've also tired installing various codec packs but nothing has fixed the blank screen

edit: I can play the files in windows media player with no issues.

edit: got it working somehow i think unregistering then registering the mpeg2dec made it work so im happy for now :D

There was no subtitles in the DVD version of the game, the files are there but for whatever reason Origin/EA never properly implemented them in the DVD release which is the version GOG gave us for them to add them they would have to access the game's source code and then patch the game and with most older releases the source code is long since gone.

Same thing with the audio in the transition scenes or more specifically the lack of them.

I guess I should have added that to the article (maybe I still will)... anyway it's definitely something that *could* be done with a bit of gruntwork. We could easily remux every VOB with a subtitle file and force the game DLLs to turn the subtitles on by default... or make some kind of launcher that does this. But like I said, getting all the timecodes for the vobs will be a challenge... It might be possible to get them to display off the CD version's files though that would take some more elaborate hacking.

True but for GOG to do that they would probably have to get permission from EA to get access to the CD version and all that since let's face it big companies like that are a bit odd with how they handle rights and distribution and all that, most don't want to but their shareholders are often not the brightest people in the world. Hopefully someone in the community can find a way to do that and also re-add the long missing audio for the transition scenes as well.

To add to the list, It turns out that a few people with the "sound but no picture" problem were running multiple monitors. Disabling the secondary monitors fixed the issue.

Short of disabling your secondary monitors (I agree that it's an inelegant solution) for now you can look in your Video card settings and there may be video passthrough options for forcing DVD and such to an externally connected TV. Changing these settings may help, or as above you can just disable the seconary screen.

Please let me know how it goes. We might have a better solution to this in the future but if you have no luck with the other suggestions so far please give this a try.

One further fix: If installing the appropriate codecs and making sure ther right compatabilty modes don't eliminate the "virtual Protect" error on startup, then apply this patch to your install http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza/bin/WC4DVDFix.zip.