O/S: Windows XP Professional, SP2
System: AMD Athlon 3200+ with ASUS A8V VM-SE, built-in Graphics

* Works perfectly, no hacks applied
* however, when I upgraded video drivers I now have problems with missing textures. Rolling back video drivers fixed it.

WINDOWS 2000 / XP / VISTA COMPATIBILITY GUIDE FOR NEED FOR SPEED III: Hot pursuit.

The following procedure will make your Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit game RUN NEAR PERFECT UNDER WINDOWS 2000 / XP/ Vista.

Game will run almost just as good and in the same speed as under win95/98/me. And I 've tried to make it as much detailed as possible, so non-advanced users can follow it.

So, let's start:

NOTE: You must not have the game already installed in your computer in order to follow this procedure. If you already have the game installed, please uninstall it (don't worry, we will install it again, but in such way it will make it compatible)

1. Go to "(My) Computer" --> Right click your disc drive (the one the game disk is inserted into) and then click on "open" --> go to "SETUP" folder --> go to "ENGLISH" folder (or whatever other language you wish to choose as the installation language)
2. Right click on SETUP.EXE file (it's the one that has an icon with a grey computer and a box infront) --> click on "Properties" --> click on the "Compatibility" tab. Enable the "Run this program in compatibility mode for" option. Select "windows 95" from the menu below. Then enable the "disable visual themes", and "turn off advanced text services for this program" options. Make sure that the "Run in 256 colors" and "Run in 640x480 screen resolution" options are disabled. Click apply and Ok.
3. Close all open windows, eject and reinsert the disc, and install the game. Make sure you make a FULL installation of the game.
4. Reboot
5. Now you can run the game under windows 2000/xp/vista, but only in software render mode (the game cannot take advantage of the 3D acceleration of your graphics card, and thus graphics appear primitive). To enable 3D acceleration go, Start --> All programs --> Electronic Arts --> Need For Speed III --> 3D Device Setup. On the window that opens, under the "3D graphics renderer" section, make sure that "Direct3D Device1" is selected from the menu (or if you don't see that, select anything else available except "software renderer"). and then OK. If a warning appears, just click yes/ok and then Ok again.

I have tried this on an two computers, with a NVIDIA and an ATI cards, and it's perfect. It even works on Vista, with minor lockups during loading and exit

This works great, I just followed the instructions and "poof" im racing like back in the days....

Everything is ok, but is it usual to receive a warning that says "Your HD is down to 1mb or less" each time I run the game, and so can't save it?

To fix this issue with the 1MB error, you need a special *.sdb file for nfs3.exe. This is a configuarion file of the "windows compatibility toolkit". You can download it from microsoft for free.

Manual to do this *.sdb file: http://www.compatdb.org/support/topics/175472_need_for_speed_2_se_and_win_xp_nfs2_se.html

Now I can play NFS3 with a high resolution and without errors. And I can save - thats on the new Windows 7 (of course Vista too).

Greetings
Rayman