why, why, why? see picture inside.

[Tenshii~Akari]

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.

[Rue]

okay I have this driver: 7.7.7.2

anyone knows if its good or bad?

[Tenshii~Akari]

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)

[trl]

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!

[BeosBoxBoy]

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.