I believe your problem is all about the compatibility mode you're running the game in.
Instead of just running the game by double clicking on the exe icons as you normally, you will want to right click on them and run with the option to "troubleshoot compatibility".
As you can see within the right-click drop menu you can see the highlighted listing "Troubleshoot Compatibility".
It will run a system test to see if that fixed it, but don't let it. Just right click on the start up file for either game and make sure the modes are set to what you see in manually choose a version of windows to be compatible with for each by again just right clicking the start file and then going to "Properties" at the bottom of the pop up list. Open it and then you will choose the "compatibility tab" at the top for the select the mode you want to run it with.
As you can see in the two open property windows on the right side of my photo, you will want to choose " Windows Vista " for Red Alert to function as best as possible.
Oddly enough, Yuri's Revenge needs to run with Windows XP (service pack 3) compatibility mod on.
Give it a go and report back if that worked. IF so, I'll edit the OP with this information in order to save everyone the grief I suppose
This made no difference at all for me. Hard to believe that a company with the budget of EA can't be bothered to put a team on this for the couple days it would take them to solve it. I guess it just shows how much EA cares about customer service. They don't care if their older games run, they don't care if you're upset about it, they don't care about your piddly 20 bucks. They just want to sell the latest $70.00 NBA game with purchasable in-game addons.
