No Sound and/or No Launch (Max Payne 1) Fixes for Win XP/Vista/7

[Ledd_Bate]

I realize this subject has been nearly beaten to death in so many posts below, but I've done some testing on various versions of Windows and a few different cards so if one of these is close to your setup, give the appropriate fix a try.

First up: No-Launch Problem.
Symptom: You click "Play" on Steam or double click either the exe file or the shortcut. Nothing happens (though you do see a rundl32 file running if you open Task Manager.)
Fix: First, close that file to stop the process. Next navigate to your Max Payne exe file. This will usually be c:/Steam/SteamApps/common/Max Payne/maxpayne.exe. Your path may vary slightly depending on which drive you keep your Steam games on. Now right-click on your maxpayne.exe file and choose "properties". Click the "compatibility" tab at the top. Checkmark the box that says "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and choose "Windows 98 / Windows ME" in the field right below the box. Click "OK". You should now be able to launch the game successfully.
Tested on: XP, Vista, 7 on Intel boards with the following GPUs: 8600, 8800, GTX 240, 460 and 670.
Notes: AMD boards shouldn't be a problem to you, but many Radeon cards have issues due to Catalyst driver incompatibility. There are several threads right below that explain this in detail and can help you out.

2nd problem: No Sound in cut scenes.
Symptom: Game runs, but you have no sound in the cut scenes and only some sounds in gameplay.
Fix: You want DarkjeThe2nd's "Ultimate Max Payne(1) Vista/Win7 Sound Fix" located at: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=848215. Be sure to thank him!
Tested on: XP, Vista, 7 on Intel boards but should work fine for AMD boards and/or cards as well as it has nothing to do with graphics anyway.

P.S. For new(er) gamers who have never played Max Payne 1 before, try not to laugh too much at the blocky models and animations. Remember, this was state-of-the-art 12 years ago. :) Just enjoy the (really good) storyline and revel in the original "bullet-time".

[Old Guy Geek]

For all those Windows 8 users getting a Max Payne 1 and Max Payne 2 error that states it requires a DirectX 8 or 9 video card, I had been working with Nvidia for almost 2 weeks loading old and newer beta drivers.

I had MP1 & 2 working on one machine with a Nvidia 9800GT and not working on a system with a GTX580. The Lenovo has an Intel 4000 and worked fine.

After moving video cards around and testing a few more things(included the changes for multiple cores), I realized the main difference (other than the CPU) between the systems is that the one that was working was running Windows 8.1 Preview and the one that wasn't working just had regular Windows 8 Pro. So I decided to load Windows 8.1 RTM onto the system with problems. It was the only thing left to test.

Sure enough, as soon as I tried running either of them, they BOTH worked fine. I even removed all the compatiblity tweaks and they launched and ran great. Max Payne 1 is missing sound from the cutscenes, but that's it.

You can see a video of both programs running on YouTube. Just search for OldGuyGeek (not really trying to get views, just trying to help).

Hopefully, when 8.1 is released to the general public next week, it will fix your problems as well. I'm not sure because my problems were different and I didn't have an AMD rig to test.

Good Luck to All !!!!!!

OGG