Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed and Win2K

[Bill Schmidt]

Hello, and apologies if this is not the proper NG for this question. . .

I have a new AMD Athlon 2.5 GB System that I just built with GB RAM and 80
GB Western Digital Drive.

I have an old Electronic Arts PC game called Need For Speed: Porsche
Unleashed that I've been told (finally) by Electronic Arts will not work
under Windows 2000. When I attempt to start the game, it changes my screen
resolution to 640x480x256 (which I expected it to do), but then reverts back
to the Windows Desktop. Below is the System Information from DXDiag:

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 12/13/2003, 20:19:13
Machine name:
Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional (5.0, Build 2195) Service
Pack 4
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: MSI
System Model: MS-6712
BIOS: Version 1.00
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2500+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Page File: 129MB used, 2332MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINNT
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0b (4.09.0000.0902)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.0001.0902 32bit Unicode

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
- Bill

 

[Sparker9]

Based upon what Electronic Arts told you, you'll probably have to setup your system in a dual-boot configuration, with the other system being compatible with your games.

 

[codemonkey]

Bill, I am currently debugging this issue myself and his is what I
found... Try this:

The following versions work with some modifications:

Need for Speed 2
(-)

Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit
(Requires the Microsoft software compatibility update)

Need for Speed 5: High Stakes
(Remove the "gimme.dll" file in the NFS5 directory, and if that
doesn't
help, see the patch-package in the download section of our website)

Need for Speed: Porsche 2000
(Officially suitable for Windows 2000 but make sure that you set the
initial
paging file size to 256 MB and the maximum to 500MB. Reboot the pc and
it
works perfect!)

Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed
(-)

Changing Paging File Size:
-you set the initial paging file size to 256 MB and the maximum to
500MB-
Go to My Computer and right-mouse click on it. Choose Properties,
Advanced
tab, Performance Settings, Advanced tab, Virtual Memory Change and
increase
the paging file size here.

Let me know if this helps...
The Codemonkey =]

 

[codemonkey]

Bill, I did some testing and got Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed to
run properly under Windows 2000. You have to setup Compatibility Mode
(I am running SP3) now. You can do a search on Microsoft Knowledge
Base for instructions on how to set this up (fairly easy) then once
you get the Compatibility mode installed (By Registering a .dll file)
you need to rename the file 'gimme.dll' to something else. I also
changed my paging file size to 256 min. and 500 max. values. The game
now runs great! Only issue is something funky going on with the
fonts... Hope I could be of assistance! =]