Running Older PC Games on Windows® 10 and Intel® HD/UHD Graphics

Documentation

Troubleshooting

000030981

05/08/2024

Most PC games work fine on Intel® HD Graphics and Windows® 10. However, a some of the oldest titles have compatibility issues. This results in any of the following symptoms:

  • The PC game fails to run.
  • The PC game doesn't run at full screen.
  • The PC game runs slow.
  • There are graphical artifacts.
  • Random texture rendering issues.

These issues may appear for several reasons that may not be related to the graphics drivers, such as:

  • The game may require a software library or component (for example, DirectX* 9 or older) that is no longer automatically installed in Windows 10.
  • The game may be a 16-bit application and these are no longer supported on Windows* 64-bit version.

You can try any of the following troubleshooting steps:

Run the game as Administrator:

  1. Right-click the game executable file.
  2. Click Run as Administrator.
  3. When prompted by the User Account Control (UAC) click Yes.

Run the game in Compatibility mode:

  1. Right-click  the game executable file.
  2. Click Properties.
  3. Click the Compatibility tab.
  4. Enable the option Run this program in compatibility mode for:
  5. Select the compatible Operating System from the drop-down menu.
  6. Click Apply.

Use different Compatibility settings:

  1. Right-click the game executable file.
  2. Click  Properties.
  3. Click the Compatibility tab and enable any of these options (one at a time):
    • Reduce color mode
    • Run in 640x480 screen resolution
    • Disable display scaling on high DPI settings
    • Run this program as an administrator