Need For Speed: High Stakes - Incompatibilities

Incompatibilities

High Stakes installs successfully onto Windows XP, but fails to run on some XP installations, displaying the message Not a valid Win32 application, or something similar. But due to its popularity with the Need For Speed fans, many unofficial patches have been produced to not only make it work successfully on XP, but also to increase the maximum poly count on cars in the game (the original game crashed in car selection menu if the vehicle had more than 5000 polygons due to mirrored floor and the patch removes the mirror effect; also even with fixed menus, the game can crash during loading or even when the race is in progress, if high-polygon cars are used; this does not apply to the cars present in the game and with official add-ons), generally improve the graphics and to fix some errors, such as not saving options and constantly appearing only 1Mb free warning.

EA released official 4.50 "Internet Beta Test Patch", that enables the game to run on XP without any errors, albeit the high poly patches are still needed in order to be able to play with some detailed fan-made cars. Also, the patch does not update the 3D Setup, so the game cannot recognise most videocards and sometimes is lagging. This can be helped with replacement of d3da.dll by the more modern version, notably by the one from the next NFS game, known as Porsche Unleashed in the U.S. The game will still not recognise more videocards that it had though, unless the fan update of 3D Setup is installed. Such an update is available in the form of an archive named spotpatch.zip.

Note, that in the version of the game before 4.50, it is impossible to add new cars, even with the official EA updates.

It is possible, though unofficially, to play the game under Vista using a tutorial on NFScars made by "LukeSkillz", and videos on Youtube have also shown that the game is compatible on Windows 7.