Our games operate at a fixed resolution: 800x600 for all games except Virtual Villagers 5: New Believers and Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House, which are 1024x768. Your computer's display must be physically capable of supporting that resolution, and the settings for the display must be set to at least that size, or the games will either not display properly or will not run. Many netbooks, for example, have screens that are physically too small to display our games.

To check the display resolution settings, please have your parents help you perform the following steps:

Right-click on your Windows desktop and select Screen Resolution. If the resolution shown in the dropdown box is smaller than 800 x 600, you should select a higher resolution. If none of the available resolution settings are large enough for the game to run, please read on for an alternate solution

An alternate solution is to force the game into full screen mode.

Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House doesn't include a configuration file that would allow you to change the game's display mode. However, you can copy the config file (ldw.ini) from one of our other games, and it will work fine.

If you don't have any of our other games, you can create one using the following procedure:

1. Open NotePad on your Windows computer, then copy the following lines and paste them into the document:

[ldw]
Fullscreen=1
ForceFullscreen=1
ForceWindowed=0
UseVsync=0
Distributor=LDW

2. Select File/Save As and choose the Virtual Families 2 folder in Program Files as the location, using the file name ldw.ini

3. Open the Virtual Families 2 folder in Program Files to make sure that the file is there. If it isn't, let me know and I can provide the file to you.

4. Run the game again, and it should open in the correct mode.