Beosboxboy, if you have time could you help? :) UPDATE: RESOLVED see last post!

[trl]

Thanks Kathy, I tried it and unfortunately that wasn't the issue but I appreciate your help very much. Well hyperthreading was enabled and supported by this computer so we disabled it and it still crashed to the black screen, this time right after I saved. I am unable to get any error messages because of this. Is there a way to get/recover error messages from the computer if you had to shut down using the power button? I am going to see once again if NVidea can help since I am narrowing so many things down.*bangs head on desk* still trying to smile! LOL I will get to the bottom of this if it is the last thing I do dag nam it!

[caffeinated.joy]

do you have both the ATI and and Nvidea drivers installed on your computer? If your new card isn't faulty, the problem could be with the different drivers conflicting with one another. (Just another shot into the dark from me )

[DLMulsow]

Caffinated Joy has a point.  If you have both cards installed and two sets of drivers, this could definately present a problem.

You have to go into your hardware and set the chosen card and drivers as defaults and remove the other one.  I found that out the hard way too.

[BeosBoxBoy]

After looking over the images you post in #14 of this thread, I see nothing with those particular items that would lead to this issue, trl.

Before I start yammering a long while in techno-babble, I don't see anything in the posts above that indicate if this is a TS2 only issue or if it is happening frequently under all conditions.

If it is only during TS2, then there is clearly a conflict between the software and your system's set-up.  I will try to be as brief and informative as I may below, but it will be long and I ask you to look over these things carefully.

But let us think about these things in this order:

Hyper-threading

At the boot-up of the computer in BIOS there may be a setting to disable this, getting to your system's BIOS will require pressing some key or combination of keys; you will have to consult your system or motherboard user-manual to determine just what key(s)

Conflicting Hardware

Sometime two pieces of hardware just don't get along because they struggle for control of identical system resources; largely the plug-n-play technology of Windows PCs does not suffer this, but some times it does occur.  If you have any sort of built-in video card, you may need to disable this device in the System control panel - under device manager.

Possible sources other than a video card may be some USB device such as a scanner, camera, or multimedia adaptor.

Software conflicts

as DLMulsow remarks, having drivers for video cards that are no longer present may well cause issues.  In the Add/Remove Programs control panel make certain to remove all video card drivers there, even for your current video card, reboot the system as many times as it takes to remove each one, then re-install the most recent driver for your current video card from the nVidia.com website.

Insufficient power

Most newer video cards have very high power demands, most now require you have at least a 450 watt power supply, if you are using a pre-made system by a major manufacturer, they rarely add such a large wattage power supply, this could be part of your problem.

An older power supply, even 1 year old, may begin to drop off wattage production.  So it is generally advisable to replace the power supply once a year.  This was not a problem in the early days of computers, but since the days of the Pentium-III this has been a growing menace to computer owners.

Some systems have a BIOS that will display the voltage being fed to components, this is not necessarily a reliable thing, since one can only see the BIOS when the system is not under load.  If you can view these figures under load with some special software during Windows, you may see numbers below optimum and quite different from what you see in BIOS at boot-up when the system is pretty much at rest.

Case/Component temperature

In micro-electronics, heat is the rust of the technology era.  A temperature even 0.01° above the designed tolerances of the circuitry is enough to cause issues.  In the long run, the heating and cooling results in expansion and contractions that result on microscopic fractures that eventually lead to the death of components.  Many things can cause the heat production to increase.  A power supply that is old or clogged with dust may begin to feed uneven or lower than desired electricity to components.  Things will run hotter when they are running with too little power, fan motors burn out or fuse, and all leads to increased heat and faulty performance.

Look carefully at your case, does it seem dirty?  is it too close to a heat source such as a lamp or a window?  is there adequate air circulation around the case to allow for case heat to be dissipated to the larger area of the room?

Cleaning out the case with a can of compressed air will not hurt, no matter how clean it may appear.  Pay close attention to the very small wires on chips on the video card, motherboard, and RAM sticks.  Cleaning off any dust will improve the performance and eliminate this as a potent source of the problem.

If the hard drive is over-heating, this will cause all manner of problems.  Cases hardly ever allow for the heat production of modern large hard drives, so this could very well be your problem.

In any event, check all your fans and see if there are any that need replaced.

Potential Bad Components

Bad video cards happen far more now than formerly.  These things are mass produced in tropical locations with little or no concern for their well-being after manufacture.  They are stored in large metal warehouses beneath the equatorial sun and bake.  Then they are slammed with little concern into giant steel cargo boxes, dropped onto the decks of huge cargo freighters and shipped across the ocean.  The steel cargo box is generally exposed to the elements and may even be struck by lightning.  Then they are unloaded at some port, tossed about via lorries and freight trains with no protection against extremes of heat or cold, then dropped in a warehouse without any real temperature control.  Then they are handled again a number of times before you see them on the store shelf or some digital or print catalogue.

In truth, it is rather a miracle anything survives that sort of treatment, so it should not be at all surprising that some video cards have more "personality" than others of the same model. Truth be told, the £1000 video card and the £19 video card receive equally horrific treatment before you open the box; this holds true for every form of digital and electronic equipment.

Testing for a bad video card is not easy.  There is software that can check for certain things, but DXDIAG.EXE run from the "Run" on the start menu is about as good as anything you might easily use or understand.  It will also check your drivers and other Windows/DirectX environment for possible issues that may give you a clue as to where things are going wrong.

You will want to test your system's RAM to see if it has any bad chips.  You may only encounter this problem when the bad chip is accessed by a program that requires a large amount of system RAM to operate, such as The Sims 2.  You can download a number of different utilities that can do this, I prefer to use memtest86 - you can download a free copy here: http://www.memtest86.com/

You may have a hard drive that is nearing end of life, hard drives only have an expected life of about 3 years, it depends largely on how much you use then and whether you keep your computing environment to white room specification (most people don't).  Most hard drive manufacturers have some specific software that they recommend for testing the health of a hard drive, in all instances it is best to use their recommended software since this will read the error codes the hard drive produces and determine whether a replacement is necessary.  If the hard drive has problems, then it will most likely show them after something as demanding as loading TS2 happens.

Bad cables do occur, but I have only encountered this very rarely, which isn't surprising since humankind has been making wire for about 5000 years.  Still, look at the various wires in the case and connecting externals to the case, look for signs of obvious damage and heat stress.  Darkened, discoloured, cracked, or perforated coating is a sure sign they need replaced.

Closing thoughts

Updating your system's BIOS may be required.  Also whatever system resource drivers for the various USB chipset and other motherboard components may need to be updated.  Consult the technical support of your system manufacturer or the motherboard manufacturer for potential updates.

Run the EA diagnostic tool, EAsy Info - save the report to a text file, and paste it here.

Run the DXDIAG.EXE tool - run all of the tests and save the report to a text file, and paste it here as well.

Then try to remember when this problem started.  Think back and try to remember if there was anything no matter how small that you installed that might be a potential source of these problems.

If it proves to be an incompatability with Pets EP, could you live without that EP?

I hope that this has not been too long-winded for you.  I know you are nearing the end of your patience with this problem.  Bear up, and we may yet whip this thing.

[trl]

You are such a sweetheart to take the time to help me. I cannot emphasize enough how greatful I am. Some of the questions I can answer immediately.

Software conflicts
 I don't have 2 cards on at the same time. My hubby removed the ATI card as well as any and all files/drivers related to it prior to putting this card back on. We also have the latest drivers installed, the 94.24, as our card manufacturer recommends (we had the 91 something driver before today). Still crashed.
He is actually quite computer "literate", I'm the one who isn't but I am learning everyday. You can teach an old dog new tricks LOL

Hyperthreading
We disabled hyperthreading and the problem still occurred so we have enabled it again.

Temperature
I check my temperature often, lately, and it stays at around 52 degrees even when I have been running the game a long while.(That is if it lets me play long lol). I also have the computer set to warn if it is getting too hot through my cards control panel. We also keep it dust free inside and out and are diligent about this.

Crashing only in game
This computer was purchased in December as a gift to me and I only have the SIMS and it's EP's installed as well as a few photoediting programs. That is all. It only crashes when I play this game. It hasn't crashed using the internet or photoediting programs, yet.  The GEFORCE card was purchased as a gift for my birthday at the end of April and has only been used for a total of about 10 days tops between my first installing it in April (then uninstalling it a few days later) and the past 3 days since I reinstalled it. I had went back to my ATI because I was in a few contests and needed my game to run. And it ran flawlessly with that Radeon 9250 card but my load time and such is better with a 512MB card. This leads me to believe the GE Force card is conflicting with something.

Hardware conflict
We do have an on board video card (it is an ATI motherboard type card) and I will have my hubby see if it can be disabled. Although I do have an exernal harddrive which is used only to back up data and such to keep my available memory as high as possible. The game is installed on the computers C drive.

As for my power supply, I am not sure about that. I didn't purchase anything like that or does it come with the card? Hmmm...maybe this is the problem! Wait I think mine is 350 watts. I will check into that.  I do believe something is conflicting with this "fussy" card because as I mentioned I have never had a crash with my ATI card. My hubby is teasing me that "If it ain't broke don't fix it" but I have a need for speed, baby, so this card with more video ram is just soo tempting. (Although my load time with the other card was not very long).
The thing that is getting to me is that last night when it crashed to the black screen my game came back for a minute, and I keep thinking it must not be the game crashing but the card or the monitor. The computers  yellow power light was solid, blinking then solid etc and my monitor power indicator was lit up so the monitor was not turned off. If only I could see the error messages!
 I have added the easy info file as well as the dxdiag file. They were very long so I compressed them to save space on the forum. I still have to run that Mestest thingy you linked me to but I will wait until tomorrow. I did notice on the Easy info report that I had 44 background tasks going on. WTF! Maybe I should turn some of them off. :idea1: :doh: :scratch: <--sorry I couldn't resist.

Thank you again for your time and patience with me. I know this isn't your "job" so I am very greatful for your kindness. I am in no hurry so read these at your leisure.  *big hugs and messy smoochies* ~TINA~

[BeosBoxBoy]

Hi again, Tina.

If you have a 350 watt power supply, this is most likely the cause of the issue.  Upgrading the power supply to 500 watts should cost in the area of USD $ 50-75 depending on your local source, similar figures in £/€ for anyone else reading this.

I read the files for DXDIAD and EAsy Info - both give what I would typify as "stellar" results; so we have eliminated software drivers and low system resources.  The only thing I saw that I don't care for was the monitor's refresh rate set to 60MHz.

Try looking on the MAG website and see if they have a download that will more properly identify the refresh rate for the game, it will likely be called a driver, but isn't really a driver.  Just a file with the proper refresh rates for the different dimensions the monitor supports.  The optimum will usually be 75 or 85 MHz; this will result in superior performance under DirectX.

If you can't locate a driver - in DXDIAG under "More Help" tab you will see a "Override" button - there you can manually enter a refresh rate to force the game to use in full screen mode.  Be sure to look at the monitor's user manual or the MAG Technologies website to get the proper value to enter.

No need to thank me, it may not be my job, but it allows me to be of some use to people to answer these more troubling questions and earn my keep as an admin :lol:

[sweetswami77]

Hi, trl!

Don't know how much I can add to this conversation, but I was also having the problems you're describing, and (funny enough) I also have a GeForce card and a MAG monitor.  I got mine to work, so I thought I'd tell you what I did, just in case one of these things might be the fix.

First of all, I went through 3 video cards before I got the right one.  Beosboxboy is right--determining faulty cards is a pain!  The first two failed because they didn't have a place to plug the power supply unit directly into them, and the load of the game was just too much for them to handle, I guess.  I finally settled on a new GeForce 8600, updated the driver (like you've done), and changed the system BIOS from "onboard" to "PCI-e".  I also bought a new 650 watt PSU.  And though that made my game look really good, none of that seemed to do the trick.

I don't know how much cc you have in your game, but I had about 5.5 gigs (about 20,000 files), which I ran through the Sims2 Clean Installer.  I got rid of all the duplicate files, but I didn't find any problems.  Since the game worked without my cc, I decided to organize my downloads folder into subfoldered categories (kitchens, bathrooms, hacks and mods, etc.) and put them into my game one at a time to see if I could determine if it was a corupt file that was causing it.  Sure enough, everything was fine until I put my "Other" file in, and the crashes started again.  I took the file out, and put another one of my folders in, and the problem went away.  However, the more cc I put in, the more my game lagged and stalled.  I think I was battle a couple problems and didn't realize it.  So, the main problem was the corrupt file (which I still have to isolate), but I think my game also just might have a limit to how much cc it can handle before it slows to a grinding halt.  I have about 2.5 gigs in there now (11, 263 files), and I'm right on the edge.  It's a little jerky sometimes, but it's not crashing anymore.

So, I don't know if any of that will help you, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case.  Hope you find a fix soon!  I know how difficult withdrawal from your Simmies can be.  Good luck!

:)April

[trl]

Hi Yakov,
   I went to the MAG website and there were no drivers for my monitor model. I also let Windows search and it said that I was up to date. My monitor is new so maybe I have the latest stuff available. I manually changed the monitors refresh rate to 75 (picked this at random) and did the same for my graphic card as well as in my game. I am not sure if they all need to be set to the same rate but it made sense to do it. My husband, Steve, said that he had disabled the onboard card before putting new card on so that is ok.

    I went in game for a short time and things seemed better. I messed around in a few different community lots and deleted items, added items and was able to save without any crashing. I wasn't in game long and will know more tonight but so far so good. :angel:

    As for the power supply, since the minimum required for my computer is 350 watts we are going to get a 500 watt supply, as you recommend, even if I have no more issues. I am sure that is in my best interest.

I also went to E-Machines and saw many drivers to download. We have never done this since I got my computer in December so I probably need to.  There are several available for my model here . There are ones for BIOS, Intel VIIV Driver1.5.1.188.50 , Chipset- Intel Quick Resume Driver,  Audio, Video, Fixed Drives-Intel SATA RAID Controller Driver and Chipset Intel Chipset Driver -Original Driver Version 8.0.0.1010. I know in your first post you mentioned chipset drivers so I definitely should download those but should I download all of them? (except of course the ones for Vista as I have Media Center edition of Windows XP. Also should I still run that other test you linked me to? I haven't done that yet.

I definitly see a light at the end of the tunnel! Again, I will know more later when I have more time to mess around with the game. Thanks again!

Sweetswami, thanks for your help as well. I do have many many downloads but my game runs very quick inspite of this. My issue only began when I put this card on and it just kept crashing. I do appreciate it though and I do need to clean out my D/L folder. Yuck!

[sweetswami77]

Yeah, my game ran fine until I installed my new video card, too.  That's why I thought I'd mention it.  Turns out, the corrupt file is one that I've had for almost a year, not a recently downloaded one.  My old video card didn't have a problem with it, but my new one does.  Maybe it conflicts with the updated driver or something.  I didn't even know that was possible.  So, if all else fails, I'd suggest checking the cc.  It might be something you've had for awhile.

Good luck!  Hope you find the solution soon!

:)SS

[trl]

That is always the first thing I check when I have trouble, I just put my D/L folder to the desk top. I don't use subfolders though, I like the chaos! lol  Thanks though, it was definitly worth a mention.

Well I have had the game running for about 4 hours decorating/furnishing community lots. I saved with no issues amd I even changed my graphic settings to high with reflections turned on then changed them again and all was okey dokey. (Sometimes changing my graphic settings would cause a crash). I don't want to speak too soon but it appears that changing the refresh rate has done the trick but I am still not gonna hold my breath yet. Tomorrow I will actually play one of my families and see how that goes. *crosses fingers*

[BeosBoxBoy]

it's not uncommon for games to have trouble identifying the abilities of certain video cards when they are new on the market and the game doesn't have a "recognition file".  What happens is games usually default to VESA mode (the 60 MHz refresh rate is a dead give-away here), this means base-line performance with almost no hardware acceleration (which is required for any sort of 3D fast rendering in a modern 3D game).  It can lead to the sorts of problems you encountered, rare but it does happen.

When I force my system into VESA mode, the game will still play, but with no high res capabilities, because the games "recognition file" has values for my card.  As I mentioned, video cards that are newer than the game tend to cause various problems, and we cannot hold game designers too accountable for the rapid release of dozens or 100s of new video cards per year.

I have heard the phrase "rust never sleeps" - well, in the same spirit, technology never sleeps either, but more like technology drinks 20 pots of coffee laced with crystal meth and crack every day so not only never sleeps but actively bounces off the walls and runs at 200 km/hr at all times.

[trl]

ROFL I love your wit! Well thanks again and I hope this will be my last post on the subject. So it probably wouldn't hurt to download the E-machine drivers that I listed in post 23, right? *hides in corner for asking a question I already know the answer to*

[BeosBoxBoy]

Hello again, Tina

It sounds like this may have fixed your problem, and that is good news.

There is much wisdom in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"; but this wisdom is at odds with the gamer mentality, we are, after all, the peerage of over-clocking and system tweaking :lol:  But for now, just play your game and enjoy it, if you later feel the urge to trouble your sleep, come back here and do the following:

At your option, I would recommend doing the following updates from the web site you link in Post No.23:

Grant County BIOS Update - seems to worth the trouble

But download updates for this at the Intel download centre:

Intel VIIV Driver - Intel® Viiv™ Software 1.7 Upgrade - seems to correct a number of perfomance issues that make it worth the trouble of installing.

The rest have not been updated as far as I can discern, but maybe downloading from eMachines and archiving against future need would not be such a bad idea:

Intel Quick Resume Driver

Sigmatel Audio Driver

Intel SATA RAID Controller Driver

Intel Chipset Driver

If you upgrade to Windows Vista, then most of the needed updates will be available on the Microsoft Vista update site.  Because of the significant differences between XP and Vista, I would recommend that you make it a point to make sure there are Vista updates available for your hardware before upgrading.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Yakov

[BeosBoxBoy]

Here is where you can download a monitor driver for your MAG monitor: http://www.maginnovision.com/download.htm

[trl]

Oh thank you. I purchased a 550 watt power supply an AGI-U550UBBK today (the store had a cheap 450 watt but no 500) and my hubby will install that and update all those drivers when he gets home. It has dual 6Pin power connectors forr PCI-E cards and supports NVidia technology. Hope I made a wise choice.

 It crashed 4 times yesterday to the blue screen when saving several different lots both small and large but only when I was going to the neighborhood. If I stayed on the lot and just saved it was fine. Again these are lots that I played regularly even on my old computer, a 4 or 5 year old Dell with 512mb total ram and a no nothing, unable to upgrade onboard graphic card. It was slow but never crashed. Haha go figure.

 I didn't want to post about the cashing until I got the power supply. I wanted to post only good news. LOL This truly must be the issue so I will see over the next day. I will be sure to post whether this solves the problem. :smt120

EDIT:My husband just put the power supply on and I am going to load the game in a bit but we found something surprizing when we removed the old power supply...it was only 300 Watts!! No wonder this card was crashing, it didn't even have the minimum required. When I purchased the card E-machine info said my computer had 350 watts packaged with it (the computer person who helped me at the store went on the website and checked) so we just believed that. I will let ya know but I have a good feeling about this!