please help me,

i've tried all possible compatibility mode settings and combination of settings.

if i try to ran the game from the shortcut on the desktop, the exe would make my windows ran like a snail.

and the only way to make my pc normal again is by pressing ctrl+alt+del and then log off then log back in.

but if i try to ran it directly from gangsters.exe (of course with compatibility mode turned on), it will ran fine, but the colors are all messed up.

please help i can't think of a way to fix this.

btw i've tried to ask support once, but they ignored me, and i haven't touched the game till now, cos i've got quite a lot of backlog of games on both gog and steam.

i've tried the suggestions that are available in the forums.

to make it easy to understand my issue, is that the colors is as if a gog dosbox game ran with a wrong graphics settings, but the issue is this game doesn't use dosbox, so i can't just change the graphics settings.

i'm on win 7 64 bit, i don't think i need to mention my hardware, but my hardware is capable of running Metro Last Light with max settings, so i don't think my hardware is the issue, but i know emulation is heavy on the hardware, but there is no way that my hardware can't handle this game.

Here's what you do:

1. Set the gangsters.exe to Win XP Service Pack 2 compatibility mode and check "Run as administrator". I'm not sure if this is really essential in this case though, that's just what I do for most of my old games. Oh, and btw, there's no need to check the "Run with 256 colors" box.

2. Now here's the important part. Create a txt file, and copy the following three lines into the file:
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
gangsters.exe
Start explorer.exe

3. Save the file as "gangsters.bat" and move the file to your Gangsters game folder.

4. Create a desktop shortcut to this bat file (and change the shortcut's icon to the Gangsters symbol, if you like)


Now when you double click on the shortcut, the WIndows command console will be opened and the bat file will be executed. What the bat file does, is that upon execution it will kill the explorer.exe (which is the reason for the color problems) and start the game. Upon exiting the game, the explorer.exe will be started up again and all will be like before.

This is actually a very common fix that works for lots of old games with color problems. Anyway, enjoy the game!

btw sorry for the long reply, i've just had the time to try your suggestion

and just tried your suggestion, and the colors still messed up, and i've check and double check to make sure that everything is exactly as your suggestion, and i didn't make any mistake, everything i just tried is exactly the same as your suggestion.

so got other suggestion ?

because i am starting to feel that buying this game is a waste of money, because i literary can't play it, because of the colors messing up.

So when you start the .bat file, your explorer.exe closes and the game starts? And the colors are still messed up?

I'm not sure what to try next then, sorry. This fix worked for me on Gangsters and on other games in the past. I don't know what else except for the explorer.exe could cause this problem.

Same problem over here.

The .bat File does not resolve the issue...
Tried several combinations of compatibility settings with and without the .bat file, killing explorer.exe manually, installing the game with in compability mode...

Any further ideas?

bump, because i still have this issue, and haven't found any fix at all, still can't play my gangsters because the colors are rainbow colored.

I bought a new PC a few months ago and ever since then, the fix I posted above doesn't work for me anymore.

This problem seems to be related to DirectDraw and AMD graphics cards. I used to have an Nvidia card, so this fix worked for me, but in my new PC I have an AMD card, so it didn't work me anymore.

But at some point during the last few weeks or months (?) AMD released a driver update, which I downloaded today, and it seems that the game works fine now. Sometimes the colors are still messed up during loading screens, but not during the actual game, so it doesn't really matter. If you have an AMD card and the fix posted previously in this thread doesn't work for you, just try updating to the latest driver, it might work for you as well.

Just run this program and it'll tell you if there's a new version of the driver for your card available:
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/auto/amddriverdownloader.exe