A guide to playing Gangsters on modern hardware

GOG_Gangsters_Readme.txt

Guide to playing Gangsters on Windows 10
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0. Download and install "Oracle VM VirtualBox": https://www.virtualbox.org/
1. Download the "Windows XP Mode" installer: https://goo.gl/KvAb9O
2. This install only "works" on Windows 7. However, you can extract it.
3. Open the "WindowsXPMode_en-us.exe" file that you download with WinRAR or 7Zip (or your archiving 
software of choice) and extract the files within.
4. Open the "sources" directory
5. Open the "xpm" file with WinRAR or 7Zip (or your archiving software of choice) and extract "VirtualXPVHD". 
This is your virtual hard drive.
6. Rename it to "VirtualXPVHD.vhd" - the extension for VirtualBox virtual hard drives.
7. Open VirtualBox.
8. Name it "XP", set version to Windows XP 32-bit. Give it a reasonable memory size. Use existing virtual hard 
disk - choose your "VirtualXPVHD.vhd" file. Create it.
9. Now start the virtual machine - double clicking is the quickest way. 
10. At the bottom, right click the mouse and turn off integration. I found that the mouse kept being lost on the 
screen. Turning off integration means you need to use the hotkey to return to the host.
11. Run through the usual XP setup wizard. Nothing important here.
12. After running through the install I ran into a black screen. Like it had completely frozen. I left it for a 
couple of minutes then forced it reboot via:
13. File -> Close -> Power off the machine
14. Start the machine again - check mouse integration is OFF.
15. Whenever a hardware wizard appears, to speed things up, I chose "Yes, now and every time I connect a device" 
and "Install automatically". Anything that did not install correctly I simply ignored.
16. Do not turn on automatic updates (unless you really want to - not really necessary for our purposes).
17. At the bottom right will appear a message to tell you the resolution and colour depth are bad. You can click 
on that and let it choose automatically the "best".
18. Now we need to add a shared folder to access the game. 
19. Menu -> Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD Image
20. Install all default options and continue on all driver installs. Reboot when it prompts. 
21. If it black screens again on reboot, simply force the virtual machine to turn off, then start it again.
22. Menu -> Devices -> Shared Folders -> Shared Folders Settings...
23. Add a new shared folder on the right with the small icon
24. Folder path, click the drop down and choose "Other...". Choose the location of your GOG download folder.
25. Set it to auto mount, permanent and click OK.
26. File -> Close -> Send shutdown signal.
27. Start the virtual machine again.
28. Go to Windows Explorer, you now have a new "network" drive. That is your GOG folder. I made a shortcut to that 
on the Desktop.
29. Before playing the game, make sure that mouse integration is OFF.
30. Play. Roll around in the sweet nostalgia.

Optional
1. Change the mouse speed in windows to slow it down, if the game mouse is too fast.

A caveat. Although sound works in the VM (testing with various sounds in the OS), Gangsters makes no sound.

hi is there way to go around activation code for windows as my old code is not working

Also checkout the fix I created for this game. See here.

@drywam, you can purchase Gangsters Organized Crime from GOG here. No activation code is needed for the GOG version of the game.