# GF's Notebook won't play certain games- how to fix? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 7, 2007, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gfs-notebook-wont-play-certain-games-how-to-fix/421864 "2007-10-07T18:33:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2007, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gfs-notebook-wont-play-certain-games-how-to-fix/421864/1 "2007-10-07T18:33:53Z")
Here’s her system’s specs- Model: Gateway NX860, M685 T5500 Display: 17" WXGA Widescreen (1440 × 900 Max Res) Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (1.6GHz) Memory: 1024MB 667Mhz DDR2 Memory (2-512MB) Hard Drive: 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive Optical Drives: CDRW-DVD Combo Drive Video: nVidia GeForce Go 7600 (128MB) Sound: Integrated Sound I/O Ports: (4) USB 2.0 Ports - (1) IEEE 1394 FireWire Port Network: 10/100/1000 Ethernet 802.11a/b/g Wireless Pointing Device: Touchpad Media Reader: 6-in-1 Digital Card Reader Battery: 8 Cell Li-Ion Battery with Power Adaptor Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (SP2) She can’t get her Thief: Deadly Shadows, Thief II:The Metal Age, and American McGee’s Alice to run. Now, she is waiting for it to be returned from Gateway for an optical drive replacement & is wondering what to do when it comes back, if these games still won’t run. I’m looking for either patches or configuration suggestions. I thought first it may be an incompatability with the GeForce card & Thief DS, but the Pixel Shader for the card seems to be 3 while the game’s requirement in at least 1.1, plus the card should be an advanced enough model to meet the requirements of 2006 games. Btw, I don’t actually know what any of this means. It’s just my speculations from reading various sites. All suggestions would be welcome. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gfs-notebook-wont-play-certain-games-how-to-fix/421864/2 "2007-10-08T03:48:07Z")
I once had a problem with a PC that simply wouldn’t run certain games even though it’s capabilities were well beyond the system requirements, it turned out to be the “crippled” version of the OS that came installed on the system (Compaq, BTW). When I did a reformat of the system using a MS Windows disk, rather than the Quick Restore disks that came with the machine I had no problem running the games. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gfs-notebook-wont-play-certain-games-how-to-fix/421864/3 "2007-10-08T08:18:03Z")
What makes you/her suspect it’s the optical drives? Or was that unrelated? From the information you gave, my first guess is this: Display: 17" WXGA Widescreen (1440 × 900 Max Res) If the game gets its resolution from the desktop, but isn’t capable of operating at that resolution, it might fail at some point during the start up and not run. Try running at a conventional 4:3 resolution like 1024x768 on the desktop and see if it runs. If it does, you may be able to edit the configuration files or use a command line parameter to get the program to run at a widescreen resolution depending on the program. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gfs-notebook-wont-play-certain-games-how-to-fix/421864/4 "2007-10-08T17:20:33Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] What makes you/her suspect it’s the optical drives? Or was that unrelated? From the information you gave, my first guess is this: Display: 17" WXGA Widescreen (1440 × 900 Max Res) If the game gets its resolution from the desktop, but isn’t capable of operating at that resolution, it might fail at some point during the start up and not run. Try running at a conventional 4:3 resolution like 1024x768 on the desktop and see if it runs. If it does, you may be able to edit the configuration files or use a command line parameter to get the program to run at a widescreen resolution depending on the program. [/QUOTE] Well, the optical drive was giving us problems anyway. She’s tried it on various resolutions and also with Compatability Wizard on Win98, Win95, “disable visual schemes” and “different color scheme”. She’s completely obsessed with this game and if she can’t get it to work, "will go on a killing rampage"_G_. She says “You heard it here first.” She had gotten it to work on WinXP on her desktop, so she thinks it must have something to do with the laptop settings. EIDOS is ---
**Author:** ![Shades\_of\_Gray](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Shades\_of\_Gray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shades_of_Gray)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gfs-notebook-wont-play-certain-games-how-to-fix/421864/5 "2007-10-08T17:44:16Z")
For whatever reason, the developers of those games didn’t include any support for dual cores. If you just follow this [link](http://www16.brinkster.com/salvage/thief/darkengine.htm), it should work. Enjoy 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![slortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@slortar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slortar)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gfs-notebook-wont-play-certain-games-how-to-fix/421864/6 "2007-10-08T17:59:17Z")
In addition, I think the Thief 2 engine requires a patch to get it humming along with Nvidia cards. SoG probably has that and the other games covered in his link, although I’m too lazy to actually check. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2007, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gfs-notebook-wont-play-certain-games-how-to-fix/421864/7 "2007-10-15T13:42:30Z")
[QUOTE=Shades of Gray] For whatever reason, the developers of those games didn’t include any support for dual cores. If you just follow this [link](http://www16.brinkster.com/salvage/thief/darkengine.htm), it should work. Enjoy 🙂 [/QUOTE] Thanks for the suggestion! I sent the patch to her a few days ago. She got it Saturday. I spoke with her last night & she was trying to get it working with the patch- but it was defying her thus far. I had to go to work, so I don’t know if she ever got it going. More when I find out what’s happening…