SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - It's Just NOT FAIR

Hello, noob here. Well, actually not a complete noob in the technical sense. I used to run SH3 all the time (you might even consider me an olde sea dog) with my now olde WinXP-sp3 machine back about ... oh... 4 years ago... ish.

Since then I've upgraded to a Lenovo IdeaCenter machine (Intel dual-core 2.8GHz, 8 GB ram, on-board graphics @1696MB with 16Gb virtual ram, 500 Gb hard drive, and Windows-7 Home premium 64-bit). Yeah I know, it is a step up, but I still have no dedicated graphics card. BUT, I've played all kinds of graphics-hog games and have had NO Problems, (such as BGO, FarCry 1-2-3, Ghost Recon, etc etc), and even do video editing with this. NO PROBLEMS THERE.

(The following has probably been reposted and rehashed over & over again and again many times un-numberable. I apologize ahead of time.)

So NOW i can't even get SH3 to play. I've read through all the forums I can find, and did all the changes suggested, AND NOTHING WORKS. :down: The game simply will not play. It shows me the loading screen and a red bar, and that's it, then it kicks me out to the desktop. I keep reading that SH3 is the BEST sub sim ever made. And thus, I feel somewhat vaclempt in whether I should go buy a newer version, such as SH-5.

I'm wondering if SH-5 is really worth it, or is it not as good as SH3? Does SH-5 address Win-7 compatibility issues? :hmmm: Any suggestions will be read and considered.