I don't know of any alternatives, ended up settling for Daemons tools 3.47.

But you need a sound card with WDM drivers (not VXD) for the CD audio to work. It can be run from the command line. So you make a bat file to do the mount and launch of the game. Here's an example. Remember to change the paths :

"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0, "D:\gameimages\yourgame.cue"
"C:\games\gamename\game.exe"

Maybe someone else has a better system?

For now, that seems to be working, but the audio quality is HORRIBLE! All the audio appears to be output at 22.05KHz sample rate, at least on the AWE64 Gold CT4390. The quality really is nasty. _INMM.DLL is able to use MCI, which doesn't have this ugly resampling going on. I'm gonna try another sound card to see if the same problem occurs.

Update on my situation: I have Daemon Tools running right now on an Aureal Vortex-based sound card with proper audio quality, but on slower hardware (AMD K6-III+, in this case), I get really ugly stuttering, particularly with Star Wars Shadows of the Empire because if I set the CPU speed too high (I have to use a 66MHz FSB and set the CPU to run between 133 and 200MHz), the game runs too fast. _INMM.DLL is still not working properly and everything I try to get OGG-WINMM working on Windows 98 result in me hitting a wall. This would be the most desirable thing for me (minus the use of OGG files, not sure if OGG-WINMM can be modified to work with WAV files instead) save for a weird error in Daytona USA Deluxe (for some reason, this game gets stuck on the last audio track on the disc and plays that one track all the time - not really sure if this is a general fault with OGG-WINMM or if it's a Windows 10-specific problem).

Has anybody ever gotten OGG-WINMM working under Windows 98 or Windows ME or is it only compatible with Windows NT-based OSes (Windows XP to Windows 10)? If not, is there any virtual CD software that can use MCI instead of DirectSound to play back CD audio? I seem to get much better performance out of MCI.

Considering the cost of cd-r media nowadays, I usually burn cdimages when running on legacy win98 hardware.

The short stop when seeking to a new audio track or looping the currently playing audio track is annoying for me, and I also have the original discs of most of the games I'm trying to run, so CD-Rs would be pretty much pointless for me with those games. I just want a good means to not have to use the original disc, but it only seems to work with Windows 7 and Windows 10 (OGG-WINMM, in this case).

Ace wrote:

I also have the original discs of most of the games I'm trying to run, so CD-Rs would be pretty much pointless for me with those games.

Me too, but I'm quite paranoid about original discs slowly deteriorating themselves, so I basically always use backup copies, when possible, to preserve originals.

That explains why daemon tools never worked with my isa sound card...
Wish there were something likee this but for CD-ROM drive

Ace wrote:

-Star Wars Shadows of the Empire: Runs EXTREMELY slowly with _INMM.DLL whenever music should play, and the music doesn't work at all

Are you using the fixed version of ogg-winmm that specifically addresses issues with SotE? I think there's a relevant link here.
Any success of running Star Wars : Shadow Of The Empire on a recent PC ?

If it only seems to work with Windows 7, perhaps KernelEx would be worth a try?

I could never get OGG-WINMM working on Windows 98 and ME no matter what I try, both with and without KernelEx. Either I'm doing something wrong or there's something in OGG-WINMM that simply does not work properly on Windows 9x.

Just taking a stab in the dark: do you have the Unicode update installed?

I do have the Unicode update and as far as I can tell, it is installed, though now that I think about it, it's possible the update was not installed at the right place. Exactly where is unicows.dll supposed to be placed?

Update on OGG-WINMM with Windows 98 (actually Windows ME, in this case): it seems the Windows 10 version of OGG-WINMM included with the GOG release of Star Wars Shadows of the Empire may be usable on Windows 9x, but I think something in one of the lib*whatever* DLL files is preventing games from booting. With this particular OGG-WINMM, games start booting, but then immediately crash to the desktop, which leads me to believe something in one of the Vorbis DLL files doesn't work on Windows 9x. If someone can enlighten me on how those extra DLLs work, I would appreciate it. This could probably be what's preventing Windows 9x from working with OGG-WINMM.

Sometimes when it comes to problems like this, I find it useful to run Filemon from Sysinternals. (It has actually been superseded by Process Monitor, but I don't think there was ever a Win9x version of Process Monitor, and even the Win9x version of Filemon might be hard to track down.) Sometimes you can see a program fail when it tries to access a particular file, which gives some hints as to how to proceed.

Maybe it has been compiled for use with an NT/XP version of MSVC, and accordingly requires the corresponding NT/XP version of the runtime library?

Damn it, I almost had it! I'm assuming because I installed my GoG games from 64-bit Windows 10, the games are looking for WINMM.DLL inside C:\WINDOWS\SYSWOW64, which doesn't exist on Windows ME. As soon as I put in OS' WINMM.DLL here, the games now boot... BUT THE MUSIC BREAKS! With help from KernelEx set to Windows XP SP2 mode, OGG-WINMM starts to play an audio track for half a second, then the sound goes dead.

Judging by what I see in Filemon (yes, I managed to find it), it seems KERNEL32.DLL closes the WINMM.DLL from C:\WINDOWS\SYSWOW64 while it's in the middle of playing back an audio track and never opens it again. We're almost there, though... if I can figure this out, OGG-WINMM should be usable on Windows 9x like it is on Window XP to Windows 10.

You're using WDM drivers in Windows ME and not VxDs, right?

You may be on to something. Are there WDM drivers for Aureal Vortex 2 sound cards? I'm pretty sure I only have VxD drivers.

EDIT: Holy crap, you were right! After switching to a Yamaha YMF724 card and using Windows ME's included WDM drivers, OGG-WINMM is actually working! But I did find two games that don't work regardless with OGG-WINMM, those being the Windows 95 ports of X-Wing and TIE Fighter, though both work fine with _INMM.DLL, so I can just use that. At least the two problematic games, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and Shadows of the Empire work perfectly with OGG-WINMM (minor fadeout glitch with the Balance of Power Campaigns expansion for X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, but I can live with it).

It's important to note this will ONLY work with KernelEx and your game EXE set to Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode. It may work with other modes, but this is the one I've personally tested. You can also use this to run the installers for GOG games, but you will have to restart your computer on Windows ME as a non-stop error will pop up and eventually lock up the computer.

I will test OGG-WINMM further on Windows 9x with other sound cards, Windows 98 and even Windows 95 (although I'm not sure if KernelEx works on this OS).

EDIT 2: And just when I thought I had it all figured out, everything went down the toilet. Something broke in my Windows ME installation which forced me to reinstall the OS (non-stop blue screens and crashes on startup) and now, I can't get OGG-WINMM working properly anymore without the damn computer locking up! With just KernelEx and an extra copy of WINMM.DLL in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory (the 32-bit Windows 10 version of OGG-WINMM looks for WINMM.DLL here), it's enough to hear music, but I'm having non-stop crashes with X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter that I cannot understand why they happen. This is happening on two computers with Windows ME and Windows 98 SE. However, I do believe the issue may be related to how the games were installed. It's possible the games cannot be installed using the original discs, but rather the GOG installers (plus all the errors they throw out). I'll give this a go later.

Lastly, it appears some CPUs do not like OGG-WINMM whatsoever. When I try using OGG-WINMM on my AMD K6-III+ build, the games don't even boot, they pop up an illegal operation error stemming from something in OGG-WINMM, in this case, an invalid instruction. Perhaps the base code of OGG-WINMM uses instructions the K6-III+ doesn't support. I'll have to see what is the oldest CPU to support OGG-WINMM in some way with help from KernelEx.

Don´t know if serves you...but i have WindowsME installed in my RetroRig and i have VirtualCloneDrive mounting images for me to install my games.

The games run perfectly and CDRedbook Audio music i can always hear.

The mount is in the D: letter.

My SoundCards are an AWE64 ISA Card and a TBS Montego II
Don´t know about the WDM/VxD though

For old hardware and OSs ask in Marvin. This forum is for Windows games on modern systems.