Newbie needs help with insufficient video memory in Win 7 when gaming

Hello. I'm needing help with my son's new laptop for his gaming. It's Win 7 home premium 64 bi, at HP laptop. 4Gig RAM. He's trying to play some games (RedFaction 1 & 2) and after clicking START GAME, a small screen comes up saying it needs 8Mb of video RAM. Nothing else is running other than antivirus etc and thre HDD is almost empty as he wants this to be essentisally a gaming and email laptop. I cannot see anything to do with video memory in the BIOS.
I've set the laptop to play this game on XP mode as that is the latest Win version on the game package.
Please help and have patience with us newbies to the gaming world! LOL
Thanking you very much.

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

It probably means what it says in that the laptop isn't sufficiently high end for gaming.

This link gives you an idea of the specifications required for a gaming laptop and it's immaterial how the laptop is going to be used if the hardware isn't up to the task.

Please post the system specs to help us advise you: System Info - See Your System Specs

Not Windows 7 problem but a game problem. From what I can see that game is too old (came out in 2001) to work properly on modern hardware and OS. Might want to try the patch for it mentioned here,

Red Faction 1 on windows 7

Hello. Thankyou for your replies and have downloaded the patch. Will ask son if I can put it on his laptop and let you know how it goes. Yes I know it's an XP game but so many games for that systrem are great - so son says! LOL
I will endeavour to get his sytem specs up. Thanks again.

Given the memory error, you can also check the BIOS to see if you can alter the amount of system memory reserved for the video card.

Hello everryone. Good news and bad news!
THE GOOD: I downloaded the patch and changed the required Video RAM from 8 to 6 and it works fine and running on Win 7 natively.
THE BAD: When he tried Red Faction 2 - same problem. Is there a patch fopr Red Faction 2 please?
I've just attempted to attach a pic of my son's laptop's stats.
Thankyou everyone for your great help.

Red Faction: Armageddon | 1st PC Patch Details - Released 12/22/09

or,

http://nebulamods.com/rf/steam/

Excuse me - what is STEAM? So I know what patch to download in your second link?