update driver and game problem

hi,

i am new to this so please excuse me if i sound stupid. haha. i used a laptop forever for all of my games, music, documents, etc. 2 months ago my grandma gave me her desktop which she no longer needs because she doesn't work anymore. i have an external hard drive which i keep all of my music for my iPod on, and a dvd drive which i bought to burn my movies on- when i set everything up, it worked fine. when i had my laptop i bought several games from playfirst.com, which i then downloaded to play on my new desktop. all of the games worked fine, except diner dash 2. when i opened this game, all of the text looked like it was only partially there. like it was missing pixels or something. i contacted playfirst's support about this and they told me my video card driver wasn't up to date. so i downloaded the driver for my video card off of the intel website, and started up the game. the text still looked wierd. then i had some sort of flash of inspiration and opened "properties" for diner dash 2 and changed the screen resolution to 640x480 and opened the game again. this time the text looked fine. but then when i closed the game and went to go on the internet, after a few seconds the picture started to shake on the screen. the shaking didn't make it impossible to read the text, it just looked like someone was constantly hitting the side of my monitor. i didn't have any clue how to fix this so i restored my computer to a previous date (the day before) and all was fine. except now my game still doesn't work no matter what screen resolution i open it in. intel no longer provides any type of support for my video card, and so now i have no idea what to do.
my video card model is: intel 82815 graphics controller and i run windows xp on a gateway that was manufactured in 2000, but i don't know what model it is and there is no sticker on the front. (although it does say it was originally designed to run windows 98) any help would be greatly appreciated. thank you for listening to my ramblings.

~Jessica

 

:wave Welcome to Major Geeks! :major

First, we need the make and model of the desktop, the version of Windows on the desktop with service pack (for example: Windows XP SP3 or Windows 2000 SP4, etc). It would also help if we knew the make, model, and Windows version of the laptop just for comparison reasons. From what I can tell, the desktop is really old.... like REALLY old..... the Intel 82815 (abbreviated to 815) video chipset has not been built into PCs for years, maybe 5 years or more. I know DinerDash and the like aren't graphic intensive games, but it could be they require more 'oooomph' than the 815 is capable of. You should also check to be sure you have DirectX 9.0c installed with the latest available updates (click Start > Run and type dxdiag and press Enter for details about DirectX). You can download DirectX 9.0c and the latest updates in one file from this link. It works with all Windows versions incl. Win98 and WinME.
:-D

 

hi, thanks so much for the quick response
okay the laptop runs windows xp home edition version 2002 service pack 2. it has an intel celeron M CPU and 410 @ 1.45GHz with 1.46GHz and 504MB of RAM. the desktop is running windows xp professional version 2002 service pack 2. it has an intel pentium III processor with 730MHz and 512MB of RAM. im not really sure if you need all that information, but i figured id give it to you since i found it even though im not really sure what half of it means haha. the desktop is a gateway (I can't seem to find a model # but I could ask my grandma for the paperwork) and the laptop is a compaq presario V5000. i think. i mean im sure about the compaq part but i just actually found the presario part in tiny print at the edge of the screen. i also had just installed the directx thing a few days before i installed the graphics driver and the screen got all funky. also i know you said something about the video card maybe just not being able to handle the game because its too old, but i have downloaded and played their newest games and had absolutely no problems. i find that wierd because diner dash 2 is one of their oldest games but the game that i bought that just came out last week works fine. thank you so much for your help i really appreciate it!! :wave