Is there any way to 'trick' a system running an Intel Graphics Chipset into being Direct3d compliant?

My poor dumb roommate bought ready-built computer that is quite robust - Intel dual core @ 3.8 Ghz, 2 ghz ram, 300 gig harddrive - but has an Intel Graphics chipset, integrated and shared. Boo hoo. The girl wants to play games and on almost every game she is getting errors of 'no direct3d device found.' After some searching I realized that her comp has the Intel chipset and that is what was causing her her grief. To complicate the matter, any game that doe not require Direct3d is old, and she is running Vista (another boo hoo), so the backwards compatibility is low. Anyway, my poor dumb roommate is crying over this paperweight she bought and I'm just curious as to whether or not there is any work around available. For example, can I tweak something in the bios and maybe get better results? The comp is running vista premium with directx 10 just fine and renders 3D in non T&L applications just fine, so I'm really hoping that there's something that I can do.