Before you give up and request a refund let me show you how you get Max Payne running in
a New York minute.
It is always a wise move to backup your local game files before doing anything drastic.

First try to get Max Payne to work with AA turned off in the launcher as people claim they got it
to work with this single step.

Set up a Steam Library folder without spaces like D:\SteamLibrary - I recommend to create the folder in another partition as your Windows installation which is normally on C:\

Install Max Payne in this Library. If you had it already installed somewhere else you have to
remove the old installation of course.

For this example I assume the drive letter is D yours may differ.

After installing Max Payne go to e.g. D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common and rename the
folder Max Payne to MaxPayne.

Then go back to D:\steamapps and open appmanifest_12140.acf with a texteditor like Notepad
and change the line: "installdir" "Max Payne" to "installdir" "MaxPayne" :



Restart Steam and try if Max Payne starts.

If not go to your D:\steamapps\common\MaxPayne folder and right click on maxpayne.exe
and click on Properties.


Click on the Compatibility tab and check 'Run this program in compatibility mode for
Windows 98/Windows Me'.




Click Apply and OK. Max Payne should start and run now.

Go to your Library tab in your Steam overlay and set as launch option -skipstartup to avoid the intro video if it is glitched for you. Congratulations you are an advanced user now.

Pro - This method is easy to apply and requires no additional software
Con - While you can start the game from the Steam overlay taking screenshots will not work.

Use ReShade to translate the DX8 draw calls to DX9. Go to http://reshade.me/ and download
the ReShade framework 1.1.0.7

After unzipping the downloaded file it should look like this:


Start the Mediator.exe and point it to your maxpayne.exe like this:


Choose Direct3D8 . Confirm and push the injector to your game.

Some reports are very positive and say it works for Max Payne I+II . I can confirm that it works
in principle but for some reason my mouse wouldn't work so no dice for me.

The soundfiles are not missing actually. They are in a weird format that a modern OS can
not read. You will experience missing music and conversations. In order to fix this you have to convert the sound files with maxpayne soundpatch v.1.12 - download links and how to here:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=848215

Special thanks and credit goes to DarkjeThe2nd.

To fix the aspect ratio use the widescreen fix:

http://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#mp1

Note:
The newest downloadable version misses the file Widescreen HUD.mpm. I tried it out and
couldn't get it to work on my system with or without the .mpm file.

Ironically it worked on the very same machine with my old monitor so it seems to be hardware related.
As the screens of the graphical novel are adjusted as well it's mixed bag anyway.

To get Max Payne to work on a specific OS and system is bit hit and miss. I would say go for the
solution which needs the least amount of additional software in order to reduce possible errors.
A good overview of known bugs and solutions is here:

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Max_Payne

The sound bug is ubiquitious and the fix seems to work on every modern Windows OS.

I wanted this this guide to be as beginner friendly as possible. It is a compilation of information I found useful and I do not claim the guide to be very original. All credit goes to the those who came
up first with the demonstrated ideas.

Here an impression how the game looks like in 2560x1440x32 without widescreen fix.