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Simmers' Paradise => General Sims 2 Help => Topic started by: Marn39 on April 09, 2006, 12:13:40 am



Title: blue screen
Post by: Marn39 on April 09, 2006, 12:13:40 am
When I am playing OFB, the family that I am playing will often slow down, and then it goes to the light blue screen as though something is interfereing with the game or game play, as it has done in the pass when Trend Mirco would update, now I have cancelled  trend mirco while I play the game, but this has been happening pretty much since I installed the game, does anyone have any ideas what would be causing this.

In the pass when the blue screen happened before the game would min; and take me out of game to desk top, but now it goes to blue screen, egg timer appears and then it goes back to the game and house I was playing in, after a few minutes, it is simply a pain and keeps interupting game play, can anyone help please.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Ali on April 09, 2006, 10:52:07 am
What's your system stats?


Title: blue screen
Post by: gethane on April 09, 2006, 10:22:37 pm
I've been dealing with this since I installed the OFB patch. I have an Nvidia GeForce 66oo GT. I had to begin with, drivers from February. To try and fix it, I installed newest drivers from March. Still had problem. So then I uninstalled, used Driver Cleaner Pro, and installed drivers from last August, 7801. Instead of the blue screen/hourglass, now after a bit, I get a "screenshake" problem. The game still plays in the background, however, I cannot see it progress as I have boxes and menus shaking all over my screen.

Today I even removed all my custom content and it still happened. I went back to using my disk, rather than other methods. I went to  81.95 driver. Then it appeared fixed so i added back in my custom content, and then my game went back to doing the bluescreen/hourglass thing.

I'm about 90% certain this ONLY appeared after I installed the OFB patch. I don't recall having any trouble prior to that.

I have an Athlon 64 3200+
1 GB crucial memory (that I have tested with memtest 86)
Nvidia 6600GT
ASrock mobo with onboard sound and nic
SATAII hard drive
Win XP Pro with all updates
I run MS spyware, AVG virus overnight and online Trend Micro once a month. I opened up my case last Friday to make sure I didn't have dust/fan/heat issue. Since this system was rebuilt in December, it wasn't very dusty.

This is driving me insane. It really is.


Title: blue screen
Post by: podgeybean on April 12, 2006, 12:50:12 pm
I think I have exactly the same problem. Blue screen for apparently no reason.( It happened when I clicked on the dresser once! Random!) It appears to be loading something......and then the game resumes. I had no problems untill i installed OFB. Its annoying me beacuse, this happened 3 times in an hour yesterday.

Athlon 64 3700+
1GB RAM
Nvidia 6600.

Seems to me we all have similar specs.....


Title: blue screen
Post by: gethane on April 12, 2006, 01:20:53 pm
Ok, I played pretty much all day Monday with no weirdnesses. The 3 things I did Monday before starting up game.

1) Checked my bios settings at my dh's suggestion. My video card type was set incorrectly (was set at pci). I changed it to agp.

2) And my aperature was set at 64 mb. I set it to 128. However, then when I tried to load sims, it wouldn't load. Then got an error message with no text, just a red circle with an X.

3) So then I deleted the groups.cache file from the Sims folder and then played pretty much all day Monday without trouble.

I haven't had a chance to play again since though

*sigh*

Its not fixed after all. I played for not even an hour last night and got the bluescreen/hourglass thing.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Vampyre on April 13, 2006, 11:54:58 am
I was just thinking myself that I tend NOT to disconnect from the internet anymore when I play or pause antivirus while I want to play.  I used to do that regularly when TS2 was new.

  Not that XP alone can't find things to do which might cause you to pop out to the desktop frequently.

  Ya might think about those first two things before ya play next time and see if it makes it any smoother.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Ali on April 13, 2006, 01:52:05 pm
OK, it can't be anything to do with your chips and graphics - I have an Athlon 64 3400 with 1GB ram and an nVidia 6800GT, with the latest drivers and I don't have problems
 
Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game?


Title: blue screen
Post by: earthmagick12 on April 13, 2006, 03:04:55 pm
The blue screen of death is happing to a lot of people, including myself. Check out this post on MTS2.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=117748&c=1&page=5&pp=25

No one seems to know what is causing this. I still haven't been able to play. The people on MTS2 have tried everything from reinstalling to reformatting. Lots have new systems. All the new drivers are giving me the blue screen. I like many others are still testing older drivers.

AMD Athlon xp
1700+ 1.5gh
RAM 1025 gigs
Graphics Card: GeForce FX 5700 LE with 256mb
Direct X 9.0


Title: blue screen
Post by: Raf on April 14, 2006, 05:11:41 pm
Quote from: earthmagick12
The blue screen of death is happing to a lot of people, including myself. Check out this post on MTS2.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=117748&c=1&page=5&pp=25 (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=117748&c=1&page=5&pp=25)

No one seems to know what is causing this. I still haven't been able to play. The people on MTS2 have tried everything from reinstalling to reformatting. Lots have new systems. All the new drivers are giving me the blue screen. I like many others are still testing older drivers.

AMD Athlon xp
1700+ 1.5gh
RAM 1025 gigs
Graphics Card: GeForce FX 5700 LE with 256mb
Direct X 9.0
I dunno...I have 2 pc's playing OFB in my house..and the blue screen of death is happening in one, while in the other the game runs like a charm. Both machines have the exact model of graphics card (NVidia GForce FX 5700 LE, one with 128 MB and the other with 256 MB. The machine with the 128 MB card is the one who gets the blue screen of death) and so far I don't have a clue why is this happening


Title: blue screen
Post by: Marn39 on April 17, 2006, 11:24:43 pm
Have ask EA maxis support tech; for help with the blue screen, and he thought I should try and uninstall all the sims2 from 1st to last pack, defrag, and then reinstall and see if that helps the problem.

My graphics card is also NVidia GForce, Went through my specs with maxis support and he couldn't see why I would be having a problem, said that if this didn't work, to remove my custom content, but according to other sites it's not the custom content or downloads folder, and the tech; support  did say it sounds like a graphics issue (the Blue Screen)

 I then ask if this didn't work could he suggest a graphics card that might work, he informed me that he had heard nothing about the problems of the blue screen or NVidia cards causing a problem with OFB, but he said that ATI is also another good graphics card, and I noticed on one of the other sites, anoter simmer has also suggest this brand, so lets see if reinstalling the game makes any difference


Title: blue screen
Post by: jinyc on April 18, 2006, 08:18:55 am
Sadly EA's solution for almost any TS2 problem (or TS1 for that matter) is to uninstall, defrag and re-install. Well, here's in interesting bit of info. On my PC (ME updated to XP [FAT32]). when I defrag I always get the message that some files could not be defragged. Guess which? Yup, all my TS2 installs from TS2 thru EP3 (including the patches). So EA why do you insist on a defrag when it does nothing for TS2????? Oh well, is good for the PC.

I have an ATI Radeon 9600 PRO and it is still awesome but whenever AOL Spyware performs a scan or Norton starts a virus scan or simply updates, I always get the blue screen and am sent to the desk top. I have never had it spontaneously happen. It has to be so annoying for you all.

In any case, I have done the NVidia and now am a sworn lover of ATI.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Janey on April 18, 2006, 10:22:48 pm
Im not really good at working out what specs i have but here goes, i opened up my system Properties. :)

Im running:
Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
3200+ AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor
2.00GHz. 1.00GB Ram
64bit ATI Radeon Grafics card (I think) its very small and very old.

I used to have the exact same problem with the blue screen and hour glass before i installed OFB. I uninstalled my grafics drivers and installed very old drivers, this seemed to work.

I do know that if you have heaps of custom content (yes it takes ages to load) but also when you click on something whilst playing which is custom your computer has to search through all of your custom content and find it (like people it needs thinking/loading time).

Im not too sure as to whether reducing your custom content will work or not, try it and see if it works. It worked for me. :)


Title: blue screen
Post by: Marn39 on April 19, 2006, 07:50:53 am
Well uninstalling and reinstalling didn't absolutely nothing, the blue screen is still happening so I guess time to change graphics card to ATI, I love the sims but can not play the game the way it is.


Title: blue screen
Post by: susaninsturgis on April 26, 2006, 12:58:13 am
Some thoughts here. Maybe you dont need a new card but its the settings possibly. I dont hear a lot of complaints on this. The reason I'm bringing this up when Poser 6 was released last year, there was a similiar problem, and I've tried to find links because it could be related. Curious Labs the software maker told us it was a card setting issue. In other words have you changed your Nividia settings by raising them. GO BACK TO DEFUALT setting, where it is kind of in the middle. The higher you raised is going to tax the card's performance and interfere with rendering and all. Also i know many of you want super realism so you set the game settings high to. It looks great I know but its hard on the card. And what if you have a lot of items with high poly count, mirrors, and all.  While its nice to take pictures with the high realism and it, is is hard on the game after a bit of play. I keep my settings at medium not high, when I had tried high, I started having problems. I was told to keep it off high, especially if you play for hours it could trash the card or you get the OES error screen to protect your computer and it shuts off :(. This could be just simple settings issue, that you need to change.  Just a thought to consider.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Marn39 on April 27, 2006, 02:31:19 am
thankyou susaninsturgis, I followed your advice last nite, and for the first time in simply ages, I was able to play my sims2 without the blue screen, I hope I'm able to play again tonight without the blue screen, again thankyou so much, One thing though I'm not the best at this, are you able to follow the thread for modsims2 and post your suggestion there as it as worked for me and it may help many other players, and I'm not sure how to do this, so I'm hoping you could inform the simmers at that site. thankyou again
Cheers Marn39


Title: blue screen
Post by: Niliav on May 11, 2006, 06:30:13 pm
Do you mean lower the hardware acceleration or what? I'm not really understanding what you mean by lowering the settings.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Rayea on May 21, 2006, 06:01:11 pm
might sound daft, but have you tried going back to an earlier vid driver?
my machine is still using the defalt drivers that came shipped in the box, and i dont get the blue screens *touch wood*

that also seems to be a problem with a few games....i often remind folks on GuildWars Guru that the FX cards have a know glitch on that game and to go back to the 7. or 8. nvidia drivers....

by lowering the settings, they mean going into the settings part of the game and setting the sim detail to mid or low, the graphical detail to mid/low.
turn off the shadows and reflections.
set item detail to mid/low
save it and try the game now....not as pretty, but if it lets you play :)
after that, you can always pop each one up till your happy and the games happy...

up untill OfB and FFP, i always had the shadows and reflections turned off...maybe they upped my machines abilites with the two new packs lol.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Niliav on May 21, 2006, 06:24:35 pm
Oh...well I play too many other games to be rolling drivers up and down so I won't bother until it is fixed. Tried the game on lower settings but it bugged me to no end. Guess I'll just keep waiting. :)


Title: blue screen
Post by: Marn39 on May 21, 2006, 06:53:23 pm
Silly question but is Maxis aware of the blue screen, have been to the site many times looking for an answer and have even ask the question, but as yet haven't received an answer, do you think they know how big a problem it is, and the other question is Nvidia aware that there is conflict with there video cards and the sims 2 OFB, if not how do we go about informing the right people, because if they don't know there is a problem how can they fix it


Title: blue screen
Post by: Rayea on May 21, 2006, 07:01:47 pm
i duuno about a conflick with Nvidia cards, but if you read the Read Me, theres more known issues with the ATI cards listed than with the Nvidia...

and i think its more of a tech line not telling the head office type.

i had a problem with my copy of Black and WHite2 a couple of months ago.
i bought it, i installed it and it would never start up.
i phoned the tech line and they said....check the graphics drivers...
did that, still no game...
they said update your windows XP to SP2...did that, again, no game...
even tried patching the game each time...STILL no game....

know what it was? My damn DvD drive was too OLD >.<
i borrowed a brand new spanky LG DvDROM drive from work and 2 secconds after i have it in the machine and the dvd in the drive, Happy me, the game works. (so i paid the bos the price of the drive the next day lol...one ofthe perks of working in a PC shop)

so sometimes, the tech guys are just rattling off the standard shtick...
check the graphics driver, check the game is patched, make sure your DirX is up to date, and check the windows xp is up to date...once you get past that,they go all puzzled and have no idea a lot of the time....


Title: blue screen
Post by: jase439 on May 21, 2006, 07:28:31 pm
For what it's worth, you might have a heat problem...some computers are configured to forcibly slow the CPU to a perceptable crawl when the CPU hits critical temperature (to prevent you from damaging your system).  You may have inadequate cooling for your machine.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Niliav on May 22, 2006, 09:07:56 am
I was thinking that too. This tower is so blasted huge (server tower) I don't think the air is getting to it. I was planning on opening the case later and sitting my fan next to it while I play to see what that does.


Title: blue screen
Post by: Creepy Blackdove6 on May 22, 2006, 03:50:52 pm
There is a whole thread about this on ModTheSims2.  http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=117748&c=1&page=1&pp=25  

It seems to be an NVIDIA graphics card problem.  I am having the same problem as well and I have yet to solve it.  Some people have solved it by adding more RAM.  I may go that route.

Also a personal observation...  Even though some are having this problem with the Pentium4 most of the people that I have noticed with the "Sims Blue Screen of Death" tend to have an AMD64. (I have an AMD64 3200 with a GeForce 6100)  I wonder if that is connected???


Title: blue screen
Post by: Niliav on May 22, 2006, 06:49:18 pm
Well tried the fan thing and it blue screened anyway. Guess I'll continue to wait. :(


Title: blue screen
Post by: Marn39 on May 23, 2006, 01:46:07 am
Niliav, try the link that Creepy Blackdove 6 has posted, there is someuseful information on page 8, it gives you another link to NVIDIA, something about a patch to fix the problem, hope this helps, I havent tried it, as I have turned down my settings and haven't seen the blue screen for a little while, so I don't want to upset things at present, but if you are still having problems, check out the link it may help

Cheers Marn39


Title: blue screen
Post by: Marn39 on June 16, 2006, 07:20:02 pm
I found this response over at the mod the sims2 site, hope this will help some people who may still be having problems, I keep checking looking for a solution to the problem

this response came from EA
(error) couldn't get the link to work so,
for some reason this link is  not taking you straight to the response, so I suggest that you visit modsim2 site and click on there link, it takes you straigth to the EA response

the link for modsims2 is

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthrea...1&page=1&pp=25

and the page you want is page 8, sorry not very good at this, but hope this will help some other simmers.

Cheers
Marn39


Title: blue screen
Post by: jase439 on June 16, 2006, 09:27:20 pm
That link is dead.  404'd!


Title: blue screen
Post by: PrincessSami83 on June 16, 2006, 09:29:14 pm
Here it is: http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=117748&c=1&page=8&pp=25


Title: blue screen
Post by: PhoeniX27J on June 24, 2006, 10:37:19 am
Seems 2 me I'm 1 of the few not having BSOD...gethane...did u test with memtest the long option...with that I mean the heavy tests which 4 1 GB of RAM takes around 8 hours or so...?

Let's c what the diffrence is between PC's that work fine and that don't work well..

ATM I have...

Intel 2,8 Ghz with 1 MB cache (overclocked to 3 Ghz)
Asus P4P800-E deluxe 865PE chipset
Aopen 6600GT (overclocked about 10%)
Sata 160 GB Maxtor (main HDD)
and 4 other HDD so around 890 GB
2x 512MB Corsair Twinx RAM + 2x 256MB Corsair Twinx RAM
Lite on DVD 16speed
Benq 1650 DVD writer
I'm running Windos XP with SP2 up 2 date till jan 2006
I've got all the sims installed except familypack and I updated all with patches...I had only 1 problem which I fixed since it was the lot...no other problems except with all the custom dl the game slows down sometimes...So basically I am a happy simmer...

I just wanna add...adding more RAM only means delaying the initial problem of a BSOD...U c a game or program uses part of ur memory and when it reaches a bad sector u get problems like data corruption or BSOD...adding memory only gives more space 4 the game or program 2 use...untill it reaches the bad sector again...just like a HDD...u can delay the problem...but it doesn't go away...


Title: blue screen
Post by: Marn39 on March 04, 2007, 07:58:50 pm
I was at the TheSims2.com - Home site this morning, and posted on one of the forums was a statement that nVidia is currently looking into the blue screen. the comment was dated 1st March 07, so hopefully for people still having problems with this, is may help. I was looking for tips for pets ep; at the time.

Cheers Marn39


Title: blue screen
Post by: Silvenight1 on March 16, 2007, 12:56:30 pm
Thank you all on this site I was begging to think I was the only one having the problem.  I appreciat the help.

With the above links my game is back in action.  I am so happy I could cry.


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