Copied over from the members-only area of this board....
thought XP mode addressed those issues.
"XP mode" is simply a software-based emulator built into Windows 7. It won't have any effect upon how your hardware handles DirectX 8 games, because the problem is in fact a hardware-based issue. In any case, there is no need to run VTMB in Windows XP mode... not if you have the True Patch installed. The current version of the TPG allows VTMB to run just fine on later versions of Windows (both 32 and 64 bit versions).
Bloodlines in particular has a long history of not getting along very well with nVidia video cards. Which is kind of goofy when you think about it, because the original game shows an nVidia splash screen when the game is loading (complete with Velvet Velour taking a bite out of the nVidia logo). I've played Bloodlines on all sorts of video cards over the years and for whatever it's worth, I've always had the least amount of problems when it was running on an ATI (AMD) Radeon video card.
A possible reason for this might be because the original Source engine... the exact same engine that VTMB was built upon... was developed using ATI Radeon video cards. As a matter of fact, the first release of Half-Life 2, which used more or less the same engine as VTMB, had "Special thanks to ATI Technologies" or some such listed in the credits.
I'm not saying that an ATI Radeon card is the ONLY way to play VTMB, mind you. I'm just saying that the VTMB engine is very quirky and it seems to be rather fussy about its hardware requirements. For one thing, it definitely does not get along with most types of built-in motherboard audio chips. It works much better with a separate, dedicated audio card in the system. And as I've been saying, it likewise doesn't get along very well with several models of nVidia video cards. For whatever reason, VTMB seems to get along much better with ATI Radeon cards.
I don't know if any of the above info is related to the problems that you've been having, but I figured it would be helpful to you and/or anyone else who might be curious about VTMB's peculiar hardware requirements.
HARDWARE THAT VTMB "LIKES"At least 4 GB of system RAM
ATI Radeon video cards
A dedicated, high-quality audio card
(see following section for exception)A fully defragmented hard drive
A dual-core or better CPU
HARDWARE THAT VTMB "HATES"Slow CPU's
(not an issue for most modern computers)Less than 4 GB of installed system RAM
Built-in motherboard audio hardware
Creative Labs "SoundBlaster X-Fi" audio cards
(or any other audio card based upon the X-Fi chipset)Several models of nVidia video cards
Heavily fragmented hard drives
(increases Source engine "stuttering")