Anyone know why this is happening?

Question

I have a Dell XP laptop with a Intel 945GM 256mb graphics card and till recently all my video games used to work just fine. I used to play Flight Simulator 2004, Age of Empires 3 etc. without any problems. But just last week I upgraded my laptop to Vista and since then my games performance has gone horribly bad. In Flight Simulator for example, I can't get more than 1-2 fps. Age of Empires 3 actually says "You have a 32mb graphics card so game won't work, sorry" or something like that when I'm quite sure I have a 256mb graphics card! Some other game said the same thing. Anyone know why this is happening? Is there some problem in Vista that is causing my games not to "detect" my graphics card or something? Incidentally, the Aero thing on Vista works fine so I'm not sure what exactly is going on

I have a gig of ram, How do I get into the BIOS?

I think some of you may have misread the question. I don't have 256 mb of ram memory, I said I have a 256 mb graphics card. I have a gig of ram.

Answer 1

when a new operating system comes out from windows, I always wait to buy it until the bugs have been worked out. I also heard (to agree with previous posters) that Vista is going to TAX your system resources, you might want to go to memory giant.com and check to see what kind of memory yur computer takes and if it is cost effective to upgrade, extra memory NEVER hurts! If that isn't an option, go to your control panel,open system, click on advanced, under performance click settings, click advanced agian, then click at the bottom the virtual memory, change it to the max, about 4000, see if this helps your system perform better, it will use harddrive space as memory (virtual). Good luck!

Answer 2

I will say that Vista is a memory hog. You need at least a gigabyte of system memory just for it to run remotely smooth.

Most likely what happened is when you upgraded to vista, which i am assuming you did not do yourself, they went into your bios and lowered the amount of memory dedicated to your video adapter in order for vista to run smoother.

Check out the bios and make sure that there is still 256 dedicated for the adapter.

Also, if you have less than 1gigabyte of memory installed on the computer you are going to want to get more to run it properly.

Answer 3

Vista is so incredibly new that it is still filled with bugs. If you can revert to XP for at least 6 months, I would totally do it. Honestly, I'm giving Microsoft at least a year before I'm even willing to try vista. You may try sending the error to Microsoft though, I'm sure there is some form of bug reporting site for such cases.

Answer 4

it is vista. like i have been trying to tell everone(lol) vista is not game ready. spread the word down with vista. Its not gameing ready. its steals your system resorces. need more ram, better cpu's, and its a must for vista that you have 512m or better gpu for gameing. xp is the last of the low resorce windows ver. that are game ready. they have run out of ways to use lower resorces and enhance the use interface so now you must spent$$$$$ lots of $$$$$$ to get better graphics. dx10 will need more then 512m ram, 1m hyperthread, 2.5gh cpu or 2.0 dual cpu or 2.0dual core. all at a large price.

Answer 5

its not all pc that can go to vista...
and 256m its real good for a laptop
what is you ram... 1.5 or 2 gig if yes well
refer to dell and make sure you got all driver update
if dell tell you not supported go back to xp..

Answer 6

try downloading http://www.download.com/Advanced-WindowsCare-Personal/3000-2086-10407614.html?part=dl-AdvancedW&subj=uo&tag=button. It's free and a great program. Good luck, Mikie.