Flashing blue screen

[discowhipped]

The blue screen of doom is back! Ever since I installed Bon Voyage back in December, some weird things have been happening.

I can go into a family, play happily for a few minutes and then the blue screen comes up, the mouse turns to the timer thing and after about a minute or more, it goes back, the blue screen keeps flashing in and out like this for a little while until when it goes back, the sims tool bar is visible, but the playing screen is blue, and when I click on something (and the little pie menu comes up) it flashes and jerks. And everything goes all weird like that until I have to quit. In total: 10 - 20 mins playing time. Including loading times.

I moved my downloads folder to the desktop to try and determine if that was the problem, but now the game won't even start up, saying there is something missing or wrong with the graphics something X 9.0c

In addition to Bon Voyage I have UV, NL, OFB and Seasons installed. Also: the lastest version of Insim and InTeen and a few hacks that I just realised I forgot to take out. Could it be the hacks causing such a big problem? I can take some pictures if anyone wants. If I can get back into the game that is.

I don't know if it is a problem with the game or custom content.
Thanks for helping.

[Tenshii~Akari]

One key thing is to make sure you have enough memory available while running the game.  If the game doesn't have enough resources to keep rendering everything on your screen at a decent rate, it'll do that a lot... especially the DirectX 9.0c "red 'x' box of doom".  There's also the screen resolution issue, too.  If your game is flimsy like mine and can't handle the graphics to the point that it still blue-screens you constantly, try lowering the screen resolution and see what happens.  

Another simple thing I can tell you that helped limit my problem with the light-blue hourglass screens:  removing custom lighting tweaks, like Gunmod's Radiance Lighting, etc. (which sucks, because that means no more beautiful sunsets... :crybaby)  It really does help in most cases, but not all the time.  Unfortunately with the slight memory limitations of my video card, I still have it rarely from time to time, mainly on large lots... but that's due to failure of realizing my graphics card's memory size is lower than it was originally ordered... :?  (I'll never get over the fact that I was cheated out of a 256MB nVidia video card my mom specifically paid for... instead I'm treated to a 128MB ATI "crapics" card with the lethal BSOD that crashes your whole system at random points... just when I finally thought I had gotten over that crap again, it comes back.  :angryfir:)

If you haven't already, try taking any of the lighting tweaks you have out, and upping your RAM and virtual memory settings, plus updating your DirectX and video card drivers.  Paladin has a good way of showing you all of that and a few other things on his site. (Sim Wardrobe, under Tutorials)

Hope that helps!  :group hu:

[discowhipped]

Screen resolution! Maybe that's it... I lowered the graphics to medium and turned shadows and reflections off etc before it went all weird and flashy last night. (really can't live with low graphics ) I don't have any lighting mods, I do have GunMods camera mod but that's it, I'm too afraid to mess with game files. I don't know... It's never done this before... I thought our computer was pretty grunty then found out all standard comps come with like 4GB of RAM now. :smt120

Lol... I know I have an nVidia graphics card, just don't know how big it is and where to find out. Do you??

Ok I have 1 GB of RAM, virtual mem. is 768 MB (this is the total paging size for all drivers ... ?) the maximum size is... 1536 MB. Wait... just read Paladin's tut, I have to what?! *is slightly scared* The computer isn't mine, I have to shar it with the rest of my family and usually get blamed when something goes wrong because I mess with it! I 'm really not an expert on these things. But I do know that my paging file size is WAY too small. This will probably take a while to fix... gah. But thanks for the link to the tutorials! They will help a lot. Greatly appreciated. :angel:

[Tenshii~Akari]

You're welcome.    And to find out what type of card you have, just go to Start => Run, then type in dxdiag and click OK.  After that, click on the "Display" tab in the DirectX Diagnostics Tool window, and all your video card's info will be in the upper left-hand box.  :angel:

[discowhipped]

Thanks for that.

Ah, Paladin's tut has helped so much! Defraged the system, which hasn't been done in ages anyway, am debating whether to reset the virtual mem, because sims works (with no custom content) without the flashy thing. I played for a WHOLE hour!

Ok, the graphics card officially sucks. It's called nVidia Geforce whatev. And it's only 128MB! Must be the problem because my game has so much custom stuff... *download addict*

How much did you pay for the nVidia card that you *never* got? (wouldn't that piss you off.. ) I'll see if I can convince my mum into buying one. A nice big one. :-P

[Tenshii~Akari]

Well, I'm not sure how much it cost separate from the laptop at the time, because I got this when Dell was having that Back-To-School sale over a year and a half ago... but I think it was in the $100- $130 range.  It's probably a little bit higher than that now, though, or lower now that next-gen graphics cards are being released.  And personally, I think your video card is fine, especially if it's NOT ATI.    I mean, 128MB cards are okay and all, it's just that the safety net people suggest is 256MB to have really smooth gameplay, and that's what I had in mind at the time my mom and I were discussing getting me a new laptop.  

And sorry about going off in a small rant again, but I know we did the whole ordering process right, because my cousin ordered it for us when we were right in the room... and we were looking right at it when he clicked on the bubble for it and submitted the order.  :?  I wouldn't complain about it so much, had I not had the issues I'm constantly encountering lately (again with the lovely shade of bright blue with all the pretty white letters that graces my screen at random moments), but it's something I regret not noticing (or even figuring out) until too late.    Hope you have better luck in getting yours than me, if you consider going through with getting a new one.  :angel:

[discowhipped]

Ok, well my mum said she'd upgrade the computer before she'd buy a new graphics card (in NZD they cost around $200) and that won't happen... at least not this year!! The card is alright, but the vacation lots lag. I expect too much of the computer. That's what my mother told me, I listen to her. She's always right.

No worries, I like rants.

So maybe no new card for me. I am hoping when I get around to expanding the virtual memory it will go faster. For now we will just have to deal with our problems eh? :-P I'm obsessed with sims too much to give it up.

Thank you so much for all your help Tenshii!
:worship: <-- lol

[Tenshii~Akari]

:smile bi:  No problem, Squirt.  Hope it all works out for ya!