Machines is a great game that seems very underrated. However, Acclaim never bothered to release a Windows XP patch, and none of the settings I've tried for a compatibility mode have worked yet. I've downloaded Windows Application Combatibility Toolkit, but it's not one of the many games that toolkit includes.
And don't tell me that it's an incomplete install. It total, I've probably tried re-installing it at elast 10 different times, all with the same damn error message:
"machines.exe is not a valid Win32 application."