I've been struggling with my new PC to get late 1990s/early 2000 games to stop crashing to the Desktop. I've tried a hilariously long list of (increasingly desperate!) things to try to get them to run (as other people with Win8.1 64bit can play them!), but have not succeeded in tracking down the cause. If you want to have a read and suggest anything, then please see my post on VOGONS (you can answer here if you like though): http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=42736
Out of the ones you listed, most if not all the titles I played myself do have C-Dilla (sp?) protection, which was problematic even back in the days iirc. Have you already tried removing that by installing a crack? Also, about the maximum memory limit,I know of some titles that need to be limited to 2 gigs, not 4. Unlikely that's what's affecting all your games, but may be worth a try.
I know it sounds like a dumb question, but have you tried running it in compatibility mode? I had a weird glitch in TD6, and doing that fixed it up well.
Yeah I should have said I tried compatibility modes and dgVoodoo D3D wrapper. All ideas are useful though, I'll have another look.
Can anyone else with a Win7 64bit or Win8.1 64bit with a set up similar to mine try the NFS Hot Pursuit 2 demo (which crashes the same way for me)? See what happens? http://www.gamershell.com/download_110.shtml
Some of the earlier EA titles may have a software renderer option. Perhaps that's why some Windows 7/8 users can get them working, unless you really meant that they got them running with Direct3D mode. I don't own any of your games, but I had some others like Need for Speed High Stakes and Future Cop. Both had Direct3D and software renderer modes, with the latter as being a more compatible (but really bad) mode for incompatible 3D accelerators.
Try dual installing your OS with Windows XP SP3 so that way you could run older titles and being able to switch between different Windows during start-up
NFSHP2 doesn't have a software mode (this is the game I'm using to try to debug it, as I got into the in-game video/menu about 2 or 3 times out of probably 50+ attempts, so it *should* work, but it's just crashing randomly). I don't want to dual my OS, as I could use a VMWare Virtual machine running XP, but that's really cheating, when people with Win8.1 64bit system with only a slightly lower graphics card can run the game! I've just updated my VOGONS post (first post above) with a full list of the crash error events that I get.
I was able to play that demo. It seemed a little slow, but it was playable. I didn't have to do anything; I just installed it and then loaded the demo. I'm using Windows 7.
I might have a new angle on this, something I never thought of so far, and forgot from my PC spec in my signature... I'm running a Corsair H100i water cooling system, and noticed this post over here: http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129762 Whilst that refers to DX9 games, which tend to be fine for me, it could be another line of enquiry to look into...
It was that, the USB connector to the water cooler! See more here: http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=42736&p=414758#p414675
