Laptop Doesnt Play many games

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Alright I don't know much about Laptops, but according to the box and my investigations my Laptop should be able to play games, but yet every game Ive ever installed doesnt play normally* and says "warning systems requirements not met", or its extremely laggy* to the point where the laptop heats up and stops playing/turns itself off. o.O Advice, err help please? I have a fan and Ive cleaned up the laptop properly(so I dont think its a dirt/overheating issue?). It only does this for games, and there's no viruses/malware/bad programs.
Its an HPDV7-3085DX

For the overheating take it apart and properly clean out the heat sink fins and redo the thermal compound. The CPU will scale back if it is getting too hot. The thermal compound may have broken loose and not be working the best. Use some good heat sink grease like Tuniq or Arctic Silver. Youtube your computer on how to clean your heat sink or how to disassemble. Really it's not that hard. If it does not help reload the OS.

The onboard graphics system is the Nvidia GeForce GT 230M - not a very fast graphics processor.

What games are you trying to play? Fancy new games will need to run at lower detail settings so it won't be a slide-show.

But if the fan is going crazy, it's a matter of heat. One thing you can add that's simple and cheap is a laptop cooling pad - it fits underneath and improves the cooling abilities, preventing overheat during extended gaming sessions.

There's little vents somewhere on the bottom, sides, and/or back of the laptop (intake AND exhaust) - be sure not to block them, especially if it's on your lap, etc!

If it's chock full of dust, you might need a can of compressed air and a disassembly guide like this one to get at some of the buried fan vents.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onFr7iumxX8[/youtube]
Be careful, and don't do it unless necessary!

HI
I am not sure what you investigated, if it was just your graphics card, motherboard or processor... or all three... I recently did a graphics card upgrade after researching and what I learned was that because my motherboard and processor couldn't handled it, it killed the power in the graphics card.. so my research into the card was a moot point :/

Also all games are not created equal. By which I mean if you are playing something like Bejeweled 1 or 2 on medium settings you are indeed playing games like your laptop specs said you can.

However - if you mean you are playing a first person shooter with settings on medium and the box did not say it could play a first person shooter.. maybe that is because it can't.

I learned this the hard way. I bought an xps 410 that claimed to have graphics "power" for gaming and high end photo editing and graphics work. Truth be told my graphics card was a 256 MB piece of garbage and could barely handle bejeweled 2 on medium settings.

Not only did I spend $1800 on this top of the line "gaming, graphics" machine... I have had to spend hundreds of dollars to get it to even be a somewhat decent "some" gaming machine.

Hopefully not too late to return it?

**edit - I somehow missed where you listed what laptop you had... sorry.... Your processor and such sound great... but I have read some reviews that say it has overheating issues...

Perhaps you could look into the realm of the olde and yore?

sorry for the late replies all, but I did take your suggestions! I cleaned the laptop(inside and out thoroughly), updated a bunch of programs, and finally had to restore the system. Now laptop over heats only when its extremely hot, and it's been on for over 5 hours ACTIVELY. (As in I'm using a couple of programs like Skype, FireFox, Scanners, MYITLAB, etc).

Hate to say it, but unless you get or build a laptop with a higher end dedicated GPU, you will have issues with playing a lot of new games on a notebook. That being said though, at least the one that you have has an I7 in it.

The inherent problem with PC gaming is compatibility of hardware and drivers to the program. It's the main "plus" of going to a console. New games often want the latest cards and latest hardware, and you never know if your card is going to be compatible enough to run the game at all.

Even with DirectX for Windows, it seems they still have issues with driver and hardware compatibility. Most games are designed for the large-size PC, not laptops.