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At first, when I saw the thread title, I thought it had something to do with the Fowles' novel 

Me too.  Well, I hoped at least.  It would make a fantastic adventure game, but pretty difficult to pull off.

Didn't work on my computer, but good suggestion for people to try before resorting to my method.

I finally got ags games to work on this computer!  The problem seems to be with directdraw and new laptops with intel integrated graphics.  I ended up getting the games to work using virtualbox.  I will outline the steps I went through for others who are having this problem.  Try this if changing battery settings, installing directx9, and changing your graphics settings doesn't work.  I am including as much detail as I can remember to try to make it easy for anyone to do.

- Download and install virtualbox.  It is a free program, you can get it here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

- You then need to install a copy of windows xp in virtualbox.  You need a valid product key and either a physical xp installation cd or an iso.  You can try using the product key found on the sticker on the back of your old xp computer if you have one and your old installation cd.

- If your old xp cd isn't service pack 3 you will need to update it.  The automatic update feature from xp service pack 1 isn't supported anymore, so you need to download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=24 and install it.

- You then need to make sure you have directx9 installed on your virtual xp.  Download and run the directx web installer found here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35.  (You should be performing these steps through your virtual xp that you are running.)  To make sure that you have updated to directx9 type dxdiag in the search bar on the start menu, open dxdiag and it will tell you what version is installed on the front page.

- Now you need to install something to run the graphics on your virtual xp.  For this step you need to open your virtual xp in safe mode.  It might not pick up keyboard commands at startup (making it so you can't boot in safe mode by pressing f8 at startup), so you may have to enter safe mode by clicking start, then click run, then type msconfig, hit enter, click the boot.ini tab, and check the /SAFEBOOT tab under boot options.  It will then ask you if you want to restart, say yes and now you are in safe mode.  Now in virtualbox click the devices tab and click "install guest additions."  Follow the prompts and your graphics are setup.

- You should now be able to play your ags games in virtualbox.  A few notes about running your games in virtualbox:
   - You need to put the games in your virtual machine to run them.  So, either re-download them from ags or transfer them onto a     usb and then open the usb through your virtual xp and transfer them to the virtual xp drive.
   - The mouse might move really fast when you open your game.  To fix this click the machine tab in virtualbox and click "disable mouse integration," or use right ctrl + I. 
  - The game may run in a sort of small area surrounded by black.  If you are like me and like to play in full screen you need to use scale mode.  Use scale mode by clicking the view tab and selecting "switch to scale mode" or pressing right ctrl + C.

I know it seems like a lot of work, but it is the only way I have been able to get ags games to play on this laptop.  So, for me it was worth it.  I hope this all makes sense and helps anyone else who is having this problem.

Yeah, I have updated directx 9 several times using both the web installer and the full directx 9 download and it hasn't seemed to have any effect. 

I am having the same problem with my new laptop with i5/win7.  I have tried everything I can think of to get AGS games to run to no avail.  The problem seems to be with directdraw.  I can run AGS games in direct3d (tried this with snakes of avalon), but I can't get any AGS game to run with directdraw (and it seems that most AGS games only use directdraw).  I have tried changing power settings from high performance, downloading/updating directdraw, updating drivers, changing every setting that I could think of and nothing has worked.  Every non-AGS game I have tried plays perfectly, including old sierra/lucas arts stuff and games run in dosbox and scummvm.  It has been driving me crazy that I haven't been able to play any AGS games on this computer.  Does anyone have any other ideas or are we out of luck?