Probably a long shot, but seemingly it can be done. I'm trying to get Red Alert 2: Reborn working on Windows 10 (64-bit).

I was able to get it running on Win8 a few years ago with some Compatibility Mode juggling, pretty sure it was XP SP3, not impossible it was Vista SP2, I suppose.

The issue I'm having is that the installer program installs fine, everything looks OK, but the program itself does one of two things on launch. It either switches to 640x480 resolution (lol) or it shows a black screen (with working cursor, though clicking never makes anything happen). In some cases, I think it does both, actually.

Support for the mod seems to have stopped/gone Russian-language only. Looking through the comments on that mod site, a lot of people encountering the black screen issue are told to remove ddraw.dll from the game folder. This doesn't work; maddeningly, I get the black screen issue only when ddraw.dll is not there. When it's left in, I get the 640x480 issue.

I've tried:

Compatibility mode on 8, 7, VistaSP2, XPSP3 for both the installer client and the resultant installed program. Numerous permutations, the only difference the specific 640x480 compatibility fix changes is the resolution of the black screen (and cursor) to what I'm guessing is my normal 1920x1080.

There is an executable in the game folder called 'Key' and another called 'Setup ddraw'. There are no instructions about their use, 'Key' makes a window pop up and disappear before anything can be made of it, 'Setup ddraw' creates a ddraw.dll file in the game folder (providing it's run in XPSP3 compatibility mode). This seemed like A Clue, but the ddraw.dll file it generates does exactly what one sourced elsewhere or copied from the actual Yuri's Revenge folder* does. Removing that ddraw.dll does the same as removing any other. I've done the compatibility foofarah with these, too, only seems to make a difference with the ddraw thing and that's really no difference at all.

My specs:
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-6800K (3.4GHz) 15MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® ROG STRIX X99: ATX, USB 3.1, SATA 6 GB/s
Memory (RAM) 16GB HyperX PREDATOR DDR4 3200MHz X.M.P (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 - DVI, HDMI, 3x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk 500GB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 16MB CACHE
2nd Hard Disk 3TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
Sound Card ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

I realise it's unlikely anyone can help, but I'd appreciate if anyone felt like trying. It really is a pretty good mod.

* I own a legally purchased copy of the game, but the mod I'm using is an AIO installer that doesn't use the original files. It's technically a crack, but like I said, I do own the game, I assume that's not going to be a problem.

Do you have any old windows disks lying around that you could try and run on a VM? I'm not much into Windows games but that might be worth a shot.

I might see if I could have a look and might find one, was thinking VMs might be the way to go, though I've never used one. Will try tomorrow and report back with any questions/issues, if that's OK? Never done any VM stuff. Cheers.

Yeah, go ahead. Biggest problem with virtualBox is probably going to be the graphics performance. Although depending on the age of the game it may still be playable.

Went with VMWare. To share a folder between my machine and the guest machine, you have to install VMWare Tools on both. It won't let me install VMWare Tools on the guest machine - it tries to do so automatically when I first set up the guest, but I get an 'access is denied' message, after which the guest runs fine but can't detect the shared folder.

Some googling turned up this similar-sounding issue, which led to the proposed solution "Copy/paste [the installer] to my local drive, done". Not really sure what that means and suspect it won't help me.

Would virtualBox be easier?

Possibly, it's free so fairly low risk, you still have to jump through some hoops to share local drives. If it's just the install media you could try putting it on thumb drive and mount it on the virtual machine or just download it again to the VM if it isn't too big.

Update: The good, the bad and the I'm a moron:

The good: virtualBox much much much better than VMFail. ProXPSP3 installed, folder-sharing effortlessly enabled (shared clipboard!), AIO installer copied over, runs, installs, mod runs and allows you to play!

The bad: It is unbeliiiiiiiiiiiievably slow. Unplayable.

I'm a moron: The mod was built to run in XP compatibility mode on Windows 7/8. Which means I'll have to put a pin in this until I can source a copy of Win8. That probably won't be until the weekend, I will come back if I have any problems with getting that up and running.

Thank you! Glorious Soviet Republic of Yugoslavia once more crushing the jackbooted lackeys of Western capitalist-imperialist hegemony!

Final report: After finally discovering that, like Windows 10, Win7 has two different compatibility adjustment interfaces, one that sometimes works and another that sometimes works when the other one doesn't, this now runs ~as well as it did on the old machine, in XPSP3 mode with a 256-colour palette. Solved, thanks again.