cruise, you do realize an older laptop may not be able to run Windows 7 and that you would have to pay close to $200 for a legal copy of Windows 7 if you got an XP computer that would??

Go to the ASUS website as Jenny did to see if it supports XP drivers. Google is your friend.

Will you be waiting until you find out if the seller will take back your Acer or until you sell it?

Be very, very careful on Craig's List. I would be quite leery of this listing. This is a $1200 laptop which Newegg is selling as a refurbished (not new) computer for $900. Nowhere in the Craig's List listing does it say whether it is new or used or anything else. Document, document, document everything.

In 15" laptops, the 7600GT was one of those that were replaced. The problem was less extreme in 17" models so they didn't always get put on a ***replacement list***.


No it will require them.


When you find a model number, look it up ***here***.


***The Asus site*** only seems to have drivers for Vista and Windows 7.

I found that on the Asus site the Asus G1 laptop still supports XP but the OS is Windows XP media center edition. Don't know if this would be good for adventure gaming or not.

Can't find the Asus G1 anywhere for sale. Still waiting for the seller's (of the Acer Aspire) manager to get back to me about the return of the laptop. Realized that I'm not ready to use Windows 7 for gaming, I want to stick with Win XP (32-bit) until I get my huge pile of DOS - Win XP games (incl. games like Baron Wittard) played, and then after these are all played I'll be ready to move on to a newer OS. Don't push me, please, Microsoft.

Which ones have you found that will not work on Windows 7?

MS Flight Simulator X Deluxe, 80 Days, Zelenhgorm, Jazz and Faust. But let me say, there's still a chance I may be returning the Acer after all, if I end up stuck with it, I'll work with you guys to get my programs (including XnView - a free multiple screenshot capture program) working in Win 7 the way they did in XP.

Thanks. 80 Days has installed and run perfectly in Windows 7 and is already listed as one that will play. I'd like to include Jazz and Faust in our Windows 7 and Games thread. I know you've tried it in VMWare, but have you tried to do a simple installation directly in Windows 7? I got Sanitarium - a game written for Windows 98 - to install in 64-bit Windows 7 simply by using compatibility mode.

XNView (version 1.97.8) is listed as being compatibile with Vista and Windows 7. Perhaps you just need to download an updated version?

Please let me know about Jazz and Faust. And also why wouldn't 80 Days or Zelenhgorm play for you? Crashes? Error messages?

i'm just going to throw in my 2cents , cruise02 , and no offense is meant ,honestly.

i don't understand how you are going to be a computer tech ,when it seems that when you get in a little bit of a spot ,you change your mind about what to do ?
have you thought of paying for,and taking a computer class at maybe your local school where you could get some solid background and be able to maybe take your laptop in personally for live help?
just a thought to try and help you out....

They may all have croaked by now.
***Problem: G1 and G1S Nvidia cards problem***
I can keep warning you about the problem with Nvidia cards in previous generation laptops, but it's starting to look like you may have to learn by experience. There are worse things than having a modern laptop on which you can't install XP and which doesn't play 100% of your games -- for example a laptop which lasts a few weeks than then gives you no video at all.

If you're going to look for a laptop from the Core Duo/Core 2 Duo generation, look for one with an ATI card. But I'd recommend asking about a modern, current generation laptop that has XP drivers over at notebookreview, where someone may have managed to put XP on their new laptop. Otherwise you're better off using VMware's 3D emulation, or possibly looking into ***3danalyze***, which emulates 3D effects like T&L and could possibly be used inside VMware or VirtualPC.

Just googled for some of the laptop models (Sony, etc) that support Win 7/XP and it seems like Amazon, newegg, etc. just stopped selling the older models - even tried typing in the laptop/desktop models that I own now/owned previously just to see if I'd get any computers for sale on amazon but it's now the same results - just a bunch of parts for these models, not the whole computer itself - what gives?

What gives is that it's time to move on, cruise. XP is a 10 year old operating system which is being fazed out. You have a perfectly good 160 GB ASUS EEE XP Netbook which will do what you keep saying you want to do - play all your older games on XP and it's portable. Why the obsession with having yet another XP system? You have the best of all worlds right now with your various computers... a new modern one that will play new games for several years to come; a recent XP Netbook which will play older games and even your ancient old Dell with the old hardware in case you run into one that doesn't like newer hardware. If you don't move on here, you're going to find yourself not two operating systems behind the times, but several operating systems behind the times. You'll never have a chance of being a computer repair technician. I'll always have an XP and if I want I can put 98SE in a virtual environment. But I no longer use XP as my main operating system as I don't want to be left not knowing how to work with new technology. I can't expect people with Vista and Windows 7 to ask for my help if I don't know anything about them.

I agree with niteowl - if you want to truely learn how to do all this "tinkering," take a class and use their computers to take apart and put back together. Or partition and repartition etc.

Wow, that's the first I've heard about that. I recall the 8600's having issues, but not the 7600 series.

Was it a heating issue?

Hi cruise, I've just bought a new system with Windows 7 in the hope that it will play most of my older games that worked in XP. I'm reassured that most of them will - and if I really want to replay something that won't work I have my '6 year old XP' waiting in the wings. From what you've said so far you seem to have enough equipment to swap around to play older & newer games. You can only play one at a time! The fact is that no one system, whatever you do to it, is going to be capable of playing absolutely everything. If you want to play all of the latest games (which is what you've said you wanted to do) then Windows 7 with lots of memory & a good graphics card is the way to go.

If you buy something from e.g. an Ebay seller & they were honest about the description, you really have no rights to return it unless there is something wrong with it - changing your mind about what you wanted is your problem & not the sellers. I don't think it's fair to keep contacting them to tell them you're not happy, happy, not happy etc & could be seen as harrassment which could get you barred from the site.

I think you should keep the laptop you've bought & if you want to fiddle around try & find some cheap laptops to play with.

From what I can tell, it was the same issue as with the 8600's, only maybe not as extreme. Something to so with heat differential and the way the bumps (that dispersed heat) were arranged on the chips -- over time the heating/cooling cycles put too much stress on the plastic that contained the circuitry -- once the plastic developed a crack, the circuitry would break contact and your video would go bad. It wasn't just a matter of how hot the laptop got as of the difference in temperature between its hottest point (often while gaming) and when it was off.

I don't think they replaced the 7600's and 8600's in most 17" models -- at least I don't recognize any 17" Dell models with the 7600 or 8600 in ***the list***. The Dell Inspiron 1720 is a 17 incher that was sold with an 8600 card, and it's not in their list. The 17" Macbook is in their list (and I think it had an 8600) but the Macbook was very thin and ran hotter than most 17 inchers. The Dell M1710 had a 7900 or 7950 card and the M1730 usually had 8700 cards, so they probably ran hotter than the 8600 in the 1720.

Before I do this, I'm waiting about whether we're going to return the acer laptop, Mom called the bank, the bank said the check (it was paid by check) wasn't cashed yet, but

we got a call from the seller, who listened to the issue of finding XP drivers for my particular model (acer aspire 5745G) especially the NVidia GeForce GT 420M driver, he told me he's going to have his tech try to get these drivers for me, and we don't have to pay for this help - it's a courtesy offered to his customers, and he's going to get back to me Friday afternoon, so hopefully I'm going to keep this laptop and have all the XP (32-bit) drivers for all the hardware.

Because the 420M is a secondary IGP, I sure don't know how he's going to do that. Remember, the only thing your laptop see's is the Intel graphics processor. Optimus takes care of the smoke and mirrors under the covers.

The only drivers that are currently available are specific to Windows 7, there is no XP support.

Edit -

From Device Manager, what devices do you see listed under Display Adapters?