Acheron

Dibya, welcome back!

Dibya, I see you also are active on RyanVM.net and have posted in the KernelEx thread. You should read my reply over there. Further discussion about this is against the MSFN board rules. http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=141037

You could try to expand these compressed files using the expand -r command to see the contents, or with the use of some 3rd party software like for example Universal Extractor. I have created a custom installer for Universal Extractor you can download from my website: http://updatepack.nl/custom_setup/ I have not tested nLite if it supports updating uncompressed svcpack.inf. I remember it did process these files, but recompresses them again. This makes it hard to compare changes when using version control. HFSLIP 1.7.10 beta K enables processing uncompressed svcpack.inf and sysoc.inf files and does not recompress them to workaround these issues.

I do not recommend just waiting. You'll be waiting with a high probability of getting no help at all. Here is a song about it:

Sure, but don't expect any easy one click solutions.

If you have problems using the original Windows 7 OS that came with the laptop you should report the issue to your manufacturer. You should at least be able to run one OS on your laptop without issues.

I searched for Battlefield 4 and it is supposed to run on Videocards supporting DirectX 10. The latest version tested in the Wine Application DB is 1.7.29, tested October 2014. Latest Wine version 1.9.4 contains many changes and better DirectX 10/11 support. You can also try to dualboot Windows 7/8 and Linux, so you can play non-working games on Windows and continue developing on Linux on the same machine.

Doing a google search I found the following topic on Lenovo about your laptop: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/Lenovo-y510p-and-Linux/td-p/1170629 You should read this thread first to see problems other users run into when installing Linux. There is a reason most developers don't like laptops, as you often have to deal with poor driver support for different OSes. Did you look up the Wine Application Compatibility database? Most information on it is heavily outdated. Only the very latest games using DirectX 12 are not compatible. Everything else is trial and error.

No, unfortunately not. But if you are young enough you probably have some time to learn about developing software and drivers. So if you are interested in becoming a developer I would first like you to try to check if you can install Linux on your laptop. This should be possible if your laptop is popular enough. You then can make it work almost exactly as Windows XP with the benefit of supporting newer games.

Not impossible I think, but you will probably have to write the drivers yourself.

Your best option for now if you don't want to use Windows 7 or newer is to switch to Linux and install latest Wine. This will enable you to run newer games. Wine developers are currently working hard on adding DirectX 11 support.

Making your laptop support Windows 9x or 2000 will be even harder then supporting Windows XP. I would look up if you can install Linux on your laptop first. That means someone already created a working driver. You then could run software developed for Windows XP using Wine.

If there are only drivers for your hardware components available for Windows 7 or later it will become difficult. You might want to check if you can run Linux on your laptop. If you are determined enough you could then try to port these drivers to Windows XP.

I don't know about drivers for your laptop but you have to look up the exact hardware components, pnp ids and see if your manufacturer or a 3rd party system builder has developed a driver for Windows XP or Server 2003 you can use.

Short answer: status unclear.