Under XP I can install perfectly with Gold Patch and the game plays fine up to scene 13. After the cutscene for the end of scene 12 the game crashes with one of those program stop responding screens.

This game rocks! It works great under Windows XP! Great story line, everything a game should be. Sadly no more I76 online :(

I got the gold version to work in vista no problem at all. To get 3dfx working i used a glide wrapper. Just minor graphical glitches and a bug with flame throwers: The flames just flicker instead of extending to their full length so they're pretty useless...

1) Install Interstate '76 (original game, 2 CDs). Don't install the old Direct X.

2) At this point, go to the game directory (C:\Program Files\Activision\Interstate76\ by default) and make a copy of I76SHELL.DLL. You may need it later.

3) Install the v1.2 update (gold edition - i76gpat16.exe) to provide various fixes. This 80 MB update is currently available from http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3720189/Interstate_76_D3D_Patch.

4) If the game keeps asking for CD 2, make sure it is in your computers first optical drive (alphabetically). If necessary, you can change drive letters around by running diskmgmt.msc

5) Modify the shortcut to launch the game. Change it to i76.exe to skip the splash screen. Turn on compatibility mode for Windows 98. This will prevent the game crashing with exception errors.

6) You may experience crashes in the menu with certain sound hardware. To fix prevent this, you could try disabling sound acceleration in dxdiag.exe. Alternatively you can edit the Interstate '76 data file to prevent the bad sounds playing:
a) Backup DATABASE.MW2
b) Open DATABASE.MW2 in a text editor like SciTE http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html (ms notepad doesn't handle large files well).
c) Search and replace "RIFF:" with "PIFF:".
d) Search and replace "zrRIFF" with "zrPIFF".
e) Save the file.

7) If you notice the other cars are driving slowly and/or swerving/bouncing rapidly, you may need to install The Throttle to temporarily slow down your system. http://www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle.

8) The game may crash with a page fault error between missions 12 and 13 (you are unconscious - no salvage). Fix this by backing up your I76shell.dll then replacing it with I76SHELL.EXE from the old version you copied in step (2). After you gain access to mission 13, revert the file to avoid other problems.
note: if you don't have the old version of i76shell.dll, you may be able to find it in the 1.06 or 1.08 patch on the web.

9) (optional) You may notice Direct 3D mode only supports 640x480 and with low resolution textures. To enhance graphics, you can install a glide wrapper:

a) download dgVoodoo from http://dege.freeweb.hu/.

b) Unzip all dgVoodoo files into your Interstate 76 directory (C:\Program Files\Activision\Interstate76\ by default)

c) Run dgvoodoosetup.exe and choose your desired screen resolution for Interstate '76.

d) Tick 'Texmem scaled to 4mb'.

e) Set the texture memory as high as it will go.
These texture memory tweaks prevent the wrong sprites sometimes being drawn.

f) Click OK to save changes and exit.

g) Edit your Interstate '76 game shortcut and add -glide to the Target, so the target is: "C:\Program Files\Activision\Interstate76\i76.exe" -glide
(This assumes you changed splash.exe to i76.exe in step (5).

source: http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=149&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=40#122173

This game will definitely play in WinXP if you follow the instructions on Post #28260 above.