Any help would be DEEPLY appreciated

[Mr. Mopery]

Ok...so I got the game ahead of schedule. It came in the mail today and I, with a gleam of avarice in my eyes, tore into the game and installed it on my computer...waaaaay before Christmas.

Then I was visited by the true spirit of Christmas (kind of). It came to me when I tried to start the game and said something like "cannot find video [something]". Enigmatic yet wise, that Christmas spirit.

So anyway, I figure it's because I've not got a 3D video card, accelerator, or any other neat thing like that. If you think I'm wrong, please correct me, but I think that's the problem.

The problem isn't my willingness to buy one but, rather, the fact that I live in Poland and when I asked somebody in a store about it today he said fine, and then I said I had a laptop and he laughed at me. It seems it's much harder to accomodate this, especially over here.

My mother's coming over for Christmas (on Thursday) and she can get one for me in the States, but my question is what should I get (that hopefully won't bankrupt me) and, really more importantly, can I get it for a laptop????

Please, please, please, please help me out with this. Thanks in advance.

[vesselle]

well, we need a lot more info than that.

if you only have a laptop, be warned, they all use proprietary stuff in them and usually you can only go to the manufacturer and get them to replace it, using only their parts.

this game REQUIRES a 3D accelerator, with 8 MB RAM minimum. my laptop isn't that old, but has an 8mb mobility rage pro in it and it runs fine. i have to keep it down to bare settings, like 640x480x16 but it runs. (altho i prefer to run it on my desktop)

if you don't have a graphics accelerator of some kind you won't see the game or anything for that matter.

you might have an embedded chip, like a 2mb one. but without you giving us your specs, it's all guesswork.

go to your manufacturer's home page and see what you can find on your machine. i'm sure they will have it listed, even if it's old.

if you can, go into your system properties and let us know:

what kind of graphics chip you have
your operating system
how much memory you have

[Mr. Mopery]

Thank you, Vesselle, for your reply. Unfortunately a quick email to Compaq yielded these results:

"Compaq does not recommend the upgrading or the changing of the processor, hard drive, system board, 3D card, or any other internal component on Presario notebook units due to the tight integration of the system. Therefore we have no information available to us as to what 3rd party hardware is compatible or how to install it."

This doesn't mean it's not possible, but I'm not sure I want to risk my beloved laptop when I'm not sure of the results... Unless of course, somebody has done this before? Anyway, I may be S.O.L. on playing W8 until the next time I visit my Parental Unit in the States but at least I asked for Planetscape for Christmas as well...

Again, thanks muchly.

quote:

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Never argue with a woman who's holding your schmeckle.

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[vesselle]

well that only refers to having someone else do it. the companies are usually pretty tight on not letting other people do work on their products.

mine's an ibm, and they always say the same thing, too.

however, you should check into what can be upgraded by compaq. my bf has a compaq, and recently they doubled his memory, upgraded the graphics card and gave him a larger drive (from 10 GB to 30 GB). he's been in 7th Heaven since then.

they even sent a messenger to pick it up, and did the work so that he had it back inside of 5 days (including shipping)!!

he plays everything on that thing. he even has wiz 8 on it!