Where are my games? Absolutely Bizarre!

Gents,

I really need some help here so I hope you chime in.

My mother in law (who's pushing 80) is not very computer literate but I've been building her a Box from pieces and bits for well over a decade. (My kids Gamer box always seemed to need another upgrade.) Last weekend my mother in law's Win 7 Box died (Motherboard) so I decided to move her into a small Lenovo desktop I had gathering dust.

I had set up the Lenovo as a Home Theater PC (mostly for Tunes really) on Win 7 with a regular 250 Gig Hard Drive; but I decided to put a small 64 Gig SSD that I had surplus. My mother in law's total Data requirement is less than 300 Megs as she hardly uses the PC like "normal" folks. She gets nervous with emails, and surfing the web.

But there is one thing she loves to do many times every day, and that's play Solitaire. Yes, the one that comes With Win 7 Pro (or above). But here's the issue => It doesn't work.

I installed Win 7 Ultimate 64 with SP1 onto the SSD , all drivers are good in Device Manager, I upgraded Windows to all the latest Updates. I installed Office 2007 (for the limited email she gets), Adobe Acrobat Reader, and Symantec Anti Virus. That's it - her total core load. I set it up at her house, got her on line, setup her email, and was ready to leave when she tried it last night. (I didn't bother to check the game as I figure it's like Notepad -it always works.)

So I went home, and after work tonight, after surfing the web for every known way to fix it - clean the registry, system restore, etc., I went over and tried to fix it. No Joy So I brought the Box home, and reluctantly wiped the SSD by re-installing a clean version of Win 7 64 Ultimate with SP1. As soon as it finished I tried Solitaire - No Joy the same error.

So I though my Windows Install disk was somehow corrupted. So I tried with a Win 7 32 Bit with SP1- but again No Joy So I tried with a Retail Version of Win 7 64 Ultimate with SP1 (the others were downloaded "Burned" images from MS) But still no joy.

Obviously I think it's somehow hardware related as all of these install disks have been used for other installs with no issues. The only thing I can think of is somehow the smallish SSD is involved (as all the hardware was good before).

I'd appreciate any help you can give as I need to help keep my mother in law happy.

Thanks for the assist.

 

Thanks for the post Wazoo.

I enabled / disabled the Games after install (with re-boots in between) to see if that would cure it but no joy. I reinstalled the "Win 7 with a regular 250 Gig Hard Drive" that I mentioned above that was fully operational as a Home Theater PC and it too failed to play Solitaire. (That was with the two year old install) I then blew away it's image and tried a "clean" install but I knew by then I was beating a dead horse.

My mother in law was constantly pushing my wife to see when the PC would be returned (with Solitaire functional) and was saying we should just go out and buy her a new Computer (just so she could play Solitaire ). I had to get this done before Monday as I'm away on a business trip to Arizona. So I poked my brother (actually connecting with my Nephew) to see if they had any Motherboards (old LGA775 so I could re-use the CPU from the dead Asus MB). Buy they had nothing suitable but said they had an old HP box that had sat idle for well over two years. I'd changed out it's MB to an Asus M2NPV-VM Motherboard about 5 years ago. My nephew used it only for a year and a half to two years before moving to a huge HP Laptop to start University (Software Engineering - like his brother.)

So he lit it up and got it to work. So I picked it up and stripped out the Win TV Tuner Card, and the Telephone Modem , clean it up the inside & out. I put in a Wireless "N" card (she lives next door to her son and his wife - so we set her up to mooch of their WiFi setup). There was a slight problem (the internal clock kept getting fouled up and the bios changes didn't stick. So a new CMOS Battery was in order.) I eventually put in the same SSD mentioned above, with Win 7 64 Ultimate, and the Games were there. I made an off machine Ghost image, and then it was onto the rest of her Core load. We delivered and set it up yesterday.

However, I'm still as a loss why the Lenovo box wouldn't allow the games to play. I reseated the Memory but no joy. I'll try to run some tests on it when I get time. If you have any hints, they'd be appreciated.

 

Thanks for the thought but my images (both Win 7 Ultimate SP1 32 and 64 Bit were MSDN virgin ISOs with matching Hashes.) The Pro Disk is a "pressed" Retail Version with SP1 (not burned) I bought to build a PC some years ago. I used the 64 Bit Burned version on the Old HP Box and the games were there right after initial install (no windows patches.)

I think it relates to a hardware issue, maybe the On Board graphics are the issue. Maybe the Lenovo Thinkcentre M55 (8808-9BU) Intel Q963 Express - Intel GMA 3000 Dynamic Video Memory Technology 4.0 just won't cut it. But it's supposed to be Windows Vista Capable, which I thought hardware wise, is the same as Win 7.

Any suggestions will be appreciated as I'm stumped.