Basically there are 2 possibilities to run NFS4 - High Stakes on a modern system:
Veg's patch runs a lot more stable than the original game and therefore is highly recommended. Just make sure to follow the instruction of the readme file.
Basically all thats needed are 2 folders (Data + SaveData) from the game's intall disc. These have to be moved to an empty directory.
Then put the modern patch files in there and you're almost ready to play on any modern Windows system, including Windows 10 and all x64 versions.
Before starting the game you have to do some configuration settings. Here I highly recommend using Keiko's GUI setup -
LINKIm not going to explain the procedure in detail, instead check out this video tutorial - AJ_Lethal explained the two possible ways there
LINKA pre-configured game version with integrated modern patch can be acquired here (full game + modern patch + nglide)
LINKSo, it is a bit of a hassle - like it was in 1999 on Win98 - i guess some things will never change
Greetings