Heh. At least you did not get "Tragic Error" or "Mutual Exclusion Prohibits This".

Decode the assembly at CS:EIP to see what instructions these are, then check if the CPU supports them.

"GTA2 Manager.exe" is bugged AFAIK. Always kinda messes up my file explorer window in Windows XP.
Now GTA2 was/is offered as a free download by Rockstar games and there is a version on the internet available with these remarks:
"Bugfixed version of GTA2 by Vike the Hube" "v11.44 2013-09-07"
For one, this version does not give the explorer issues mentioned above. It should be easy to find this fixed version of GTA2.

My copy of GTA2 has issues with loading from CD-ROM (it needs to be in the drive due to the copyright-control system) and sometimes will crash upon start-up if I try to start the game directly from the hard disk instead of waiting for the CD to autorun and then starting the game. It's also crash-prone when loading the next music track while a video slowdown occurs (e.g. when loads of chained explosions occur).

Also, it doesn't like certain video drivers and needs a beefy video card if you want to use any of the more advanced visual effects...

From memory, I recall the newer GTA2 downloads requiring DX8, which I don't want to install on such a system. DX 6.1 is as far as I want to go on a Cyrix 5x86. This is why I wanted the original GTA2 version; it requires DX 6.1. I'll try to locate the bug fixed version, and also try loading the game while the CD-ROM is spinning, or perhaps load the game from the CD-ROM's autostart menu if there is such an option.

Unfortunately, loading the game with the CD spinning didn't help. The issue may be related to gta2.exe and not gta2 manager.exe because when I run gta2.exe by itself, I get the illegal operation message.

Concerning the GTA2 11.44 fix. I assume I was supposed to install this update into my original GTA2 folder, which I did.

Now when I try to open gta2manager.exe, I get the following error:

Error Starting Program
A required .DLL file, DINPUT8.DLL, was not found.

Does this mean that the update requires DirectX version 8? Ideally, I'd like to keep DirectX 6.1 as all the game titles I use require DirectX are version 2 thru 6.

If I try to run gta2.exe, I get the following two errors:

Error Starting Program
The C:\PROGRAM FILES\GTA2\GTA2.EXE file can't load at the desired address, and is not relocatable. Contact your vendor to get a version that is compatible with this version of Windows.

and under that dialogue box is this error:

Windows cannot run this program because it is in an invalid format.

Anyone know how to get the original GTA2 - DirectX 6.1 - game working?