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Can anyone explain do me, why do things like this keep happening in my game?

(http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i222/pellaz_har_aralis/crsp.jpg)

Good Lord!  I've only had something similar to your problem happen to me once, but only during Live mode in one of my houses.  The game quickly refreshed itself afterwards, though, and it hasn't reoccured yet since I updated the DirectX file.

What type of video chip do you have?

And did you update your video drivers, along with DirectX?

EDIT:  Also, do you have any of the Holiday stuff packs installed?  I've heard of people having problems with that too.

I don´t have holiday pack...
I have Nvidia....will check which ones..anyways I have the right drivers.
When this happens I have to close the game because whatever I try to do, it freezes itself. It never happens when I start playing but always after some time (one hour or so).

You do have the latest drivers downloaded from the Nvidia site, right?  

It could also possibly be the amount of memory used during gameplay... I know that sometimes, when running my game for over a few hours my shadows and any neighborhood decorations start "flashing" on and off.  Then the game will start to run a lot slower.  

And I apologize in advance if I'm not enough help... I'll keep trying to think of any possible solutions, though. Hopefully someone else that knows what it is can also lend a hand soon!

Maybe there might be a memory problem too, yes...although its weird, the pc has a lot of memory, but I know that sometimes when ive been playing for a longer time, some other program like paint shop will tell me it doesnt have enough memory. Not very often, but it has happened... but this pc has plenty of RAM so its weird.

I`ve learned following on this site: it`s better to have at leats 25% of free space on the drive.

I did some cleaning and I don`t get these memory messages any more.

Also, if you have any paging files set, it's best not to put them on your main hardrive that stores the majority of your files, that is if you have more than one.  There's a tutoriol on http://www.simwardrobe.com explaining how to maximize paging files, hardrive space and memory to get the best possible performance.

 
I wounder if you Proc is getting to hot as well as your card. this looks to me like a heat issuse more then anything. I could be wronf. we need Super BBB!
 
Till then Open up the side if your PC and see how dusty it is in there. Dust will keep the fan's from keeping things cool, that in turn makes them not work right.
 
Then make sure your PC is in a good Air flow space. rember that aire come in from the frount and goes out the back on a Pc so leave room in the back for the hot air to get out.
 
Hope this helps :) :blob6:

that my child is a the mother of all video artefacts!  Your video card is being pushed to the very wall!  Try lowering the game settings!  and remove any suspicious new items you downloaded.  Also check to make sure your video card's fan is working, because it looks like it is at death's door in that screen cap.

This same thing happened to my sims game. I had to uninstall everything, buy a crapload of DVD's and backup my objects and so forth... and reinstall it on a new computer. I had to do this because for some reason, it wouldnt let me reinstall it afterwards..... *sad face*

So. News on this crap.

I had my pc checked, and apparently, my fans are allright, and so is my graphic card - or at least, no problems have been found, except the fan was cleaned, but there wasn´t as much to clean either.

As to air flow space, my pc has room in the front and in the back, and it is currently standing with its back towards the window, where there´s cold all day long, so it shouldn´t be complaining.

Next, I would like to assure you this has nothing to do with any new downloads, because it kept occasionally happening since the very start when I bought this game in the summer.

I am kind of angry and sad that this pc´s graphic should be exploding like this, because honestly I paid a fortune for the pc, it´s new since August, and I had chosen it especially because it was a gaming pc and should not be kicking my butt like the old one was, while dealing with graphically difficult programs. I know that "should" doesn´t always mean it won´t, but it is still strange.

As to the last person who wrote here. I did try reinstalling the game, I was able to do it without problems. However it didn´t influence these issues.

If anyone else here has an opinion, please say it!!!

Other info
1) This always happens ONLY in the neighbourhood view. The graphics never go bad in any way while playing a house or while in CAS.
2) Occasionally, a milder variant of this happens, that is, either only some houses are flashing red, or, when I run a mouse over a house, the info about the house appears, and then when I run it over another house, the info pops out but the previous one is still there, so I cannot enter the house because the two (or more) infos are there at the same time. Or, I cannot scroll over the neighbourhood with a mouse because it freezes itself.
3) This doesn´t happen everytime I play, and when I close the game and restart it, it is allright again.

I agree with everyone that it sounds like overheating of graphic card, especially since it always happens only after I´ve been playing for some time but how can I prevent it from happening when it actually should not be overheating?

Rue, Your problem definitely sounds like a graphics issue, but it could be lack of ram also. You have not specified your computer specs, but just a couple of opinions; 1) if you are running NVIDIA gpu you may need to roll back to an older version driver. I had this problem on my desktop, and many people have posted along this same train of thought. It is not always the latest, but the best for your system  2) RAM, in the early days of playing this game I would have said 1 Gb would rock. As the game keeps getting bigger and hacks and mods get more advanced I feel that 1 Gb mark is over. I now play on a notebook computer with 2 Gb's RAM, I have simple GPU, ATI 200m with 128Mb dedicated memory and another 128 Mb of system ram for a total of 256 Mb's. I can play with all settings at max\med with no problems. My desktop has a faster processor and an Nvidia Fx5500 with 256Mb memory and 1 Gb of RAM. The quality of game play is far better on the Notebook. I mention all of this because there are so many configurations of computers, and they all have good and bad points, so it is important to find what works for your computer. It may be as simple as an older driver, or a basic upgrade to more ram.

I wish you good luck and do hope you find a solution that woks for you. It is frustrating to have problems that take away from the fun of this game. Good Simming!

You say you have Nvidia - are you using the newest drivers?

Time to undermine everyone else's advice and say if you are, try downgrading. In my experience, the newer Nvidia drivers are crap!

Hey Sadie79, you agreed with me!! That don't happen very often that someone agrees wiyh my advice. I had major problems on my desktop and rolled back to an older Nvidia driver and it was the fix for me. From now until Nvidia makes a more sims 2 friendly card I will use ATI. Much better for sims 2, in my opinion. :)

So I have 1024 MB RAM.
And, in the moment nvidia GeForce 6600

does that help?

Rue, Do you have the disk with the driver that shipped with your graphics card? If you do I would try that driver to see what happens. Just my opinion.

That´s what I had from the beginning, though, and the game first froze in the neighbourhood 3 days after buying the pc. :sad4:

Also, about 4x, it even happened that the pc restarted itself in the neighbourhood view.

Rue, according to Nvidia site driver 93.71 is the latest available for your card. Which driver are you currently using?

Most of the driver problems are when people update to the latest release. The driver that ships with a card is usually very stable, if nothing else. If you are running a fairly old driver you may actually need a more recent release. My Fx5500 uses the same driver as yours. The last driver I updated to was back about 89.xx, which was not good at all for my card. I rolled it back to (I think) 77.71. I could be wrong because my desktop is unhooked at the moment, and in fact I haven't used it in a couple of months since going to use of my notebook full time. I am going to start using my desktop for making custom content after I get a bit better at it. I do not want too much on my notebooks drive.

After reading your last reply it sounds like you have never updated your drivers. This may be the best place to start, then go from there depending on the outcome. Of your 1 Gb of ram, how much is free for game play? The 1 Gb mark on my Desktop, yeilded about 750 Mb free for playing the sims 2. I had to restart about every two hours or my game would run at a crawl. I have not had this issue with the Notebooks 2 Gb's of ram, with about 1.5 Gb available for game play.

Hmm... it's only ever been really, really slow for me. That looks like a crappy picture of the inside of your computer... look at the big box things... they look like computer chips.

I was seeing on a different game forum that the 6600 series has problems depending on the driver - so I think perhaps the advice to "downgrade" the driver may be good advice here.

1) Stupid question. How can I find out what driver I currently have?


2) So the restarting in neighbourhood view happened again. Said system recovered after a serious error. :sad4: does that still seem like the graphic card issue?

start/all programs/ea games/the sims 2/newest released ep/easy info

that will give you some information on your computer (including graphics card and driver)

Oh gee. I tried it again a while ago and for a change, the whole neighbourhood was bright blue-turquois. :sad4:

easy info? I didn´t find anything like that, only "read me"

However, in "read me", there were some of problems similar to mine listed, so it´s quite clear now its graphic drivers/card.

Sorry to double post, but news on the topics. Most of my neighbourhood look normal, but the last one that restarted my pc earlier today is now constantly looking like this

(http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i222/pellaz_har_aralis/noes.png)

And it is impossible to scroll in it. :sad4:

/it might seem to be looking normal, but its not, it is very dark/

Did you click the Day/Night Icon in the UI?  From the looks of the cars' headlights, it looks like the neighborhood is in night mode.  Don't know about the not being able to scroll in part... now that I think about it did you install any custom camera files lately?

And how is your graphics card doing since I've last posted?  I hope things get better!  :)

Not really, the hood started to be this dark by itself... also, I never installed any camera files. :( Since you last posted, pc rebooted several times while in neighbourhood view, so.... things s-uck. :(

eww Nvidia never have had any thing good come from them....

So even if you click the Day/Night icon, the neighborhood still stays dark?  Wow...  I guess if possible you might want to invest in a different video card.  Personally, I don't have anything using Nvidia.  I thought ATI Radeon was bad, but after finding an alternate driver other than the official ones that worked for me, my BSOD (blue screen of death...pure evil!) was a thing of the past.  Like the others have said, try either rolling back to an older video driver, or finding an alternate driver that is highly approved.

so does anyone have an idea how to find out what drivers I have now?

Go to Control Panel > Click on System (or if you have it on the other settings Performance and Maintenance then System).  

After that, click on the Hardware Tab, then the Device Manager button.  

When a window pops up, click on the "plus" sign next to Display adapters.  

Your display adapter and the driver's name should pop up underneath it.  When the name of your driver(s) pops up, you can right click and select Properties to see more details about it.

okay I have this driver: 7.7.7.2

anyone knows if its good or bad?

Is there anything else besides that listed?

It looks like it might not be the latest one... but I'm not sure about it... did you download the driver update from the link below?  

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71.html (11/06)

I had tons of problems with a GEForce 6200OC card, new drivers, old drivers nothing worked, it was very problematic. Luckily I was able to return it and got an Ati and all is fine now. Go figure. I wish you luck!

several variants in the nvidia 6200 series were problematic for The Sims 2 - but most of the problems can be rectified by trial and error with the drivers (try older and newer versions).  nVidia has never done me wrong, but I also don't buy like the average buyer.  ATI has done wicked things to me in the past with its drivers - things like memory trapping the boot up so I am caught in an endless loop of re-boots, the driver having the wrong memory refresh rate specified so the card was over-clocked and the little fan was inadequate to cooling the card so I lost not only the card but also the AGP slot on the board, that sort of thing.  I have not tried an ATI card that gave me equal performance with an nvidia card at 75% of the price of the parallel ATI card.  And now that AMD has bought ATI and assumed an unbelievable 5 billion dollars in debt doing so, I have very little cause to believe ATI will remain a "top video card" much longer, AMD needs the money too badly to be too particular about its development & production costs.

What I see happening more and more is the crap of yesteryear showing up on shelves at Walmart - known bad units repackaged and sold at stupid cheap prices.  There is a particular model of HP motherboard that was notorious for problems that I see increasingly used in non-HP systems because the 3rd party company that manufactured the motherboards re-carton'ed them and ran them off to computer shows rather than take the loss.

it is all a consequence of demanding computer components for cheaper.  They make it cheaper by making it cheaper; so there will necessarily be more bad eggs in the basket.

Rue - at this point, the best thing you can do is to get a different video card.  Make your choice based on how much you can spend and try reading reviews of hardware.