I’m pretty sure your saved games are lost if you uninstalled and reinstalled the game. When I migrated my games from my old computer to my new one, I copied and pasted from one drive to another instead of freshly installing the games. That’s what I’d recommend doing whenever you get your next computer, because saved games are locally stored. Also my Avernum(s) are from GOG, not Steam. GOG has no DRM so I’d recommend looking there for a game rather than Steam, if you’re ok juggling two launchers.

It sounds, in my inexpert opinion, like the drivers for your graphics card are corrupted and if you know what GPU you have, you can download them. Even low-end computers have GPUs/graphics cards, or else they couldn’t have a visual display. I’m thinking you have an Intel processor because those have integrated graphics. The only thing is that Avernum isn’t exactly a graphics-intensive game and should do fine with integrated graphics. If you want to try this, there’s a Windows command that will show you what GPU you have:

Press Windows key-R and type in “dxdiag”, then click “display”.

Let me know (though your friend probably knows better: updating your drivers is safe and unless power is interrupted in the middle of updates (this will corrupt the drivers)) you can’t really fuck anything up.

Thanks for the tips. I’m home early from work because I was throwing up with diarrhea – thankfully I was in the bathroom for both – and awful heartburn. If I vomit again tomorrow morning I’ll stay home and play games with some medical marijuana. Since I work with meat and fresh produce I’m not allowed to work if I have gastrointestinal problems.

I’m using my TV as my computer monitor now. It’s only like 38 inches or something but it’s bigger than my old 27-inch monitor.