Blank TV screens during play

I've had this problem before in my game: the TV screens don't show any video whatsoever; only on one lot did they show up, and the others do not.
I had a major crash of my computer just the other day, but the hubby did reinstall a new drive, and put all the components for the game in the proper order-he's a pro, so he did it the right way, and I haven't done anything except install all my downloads from the previous game.
I looked in the game "movies" folders, and found that the AVI movies were missing, copied the originals from the core installed game, and still no go.
What is wrong, and how do I fix it? I don't believe that I'm missing any graphics stuff (have that all in order, newest settings, etc), but there is something missing!
I have only the base game. I haven't even done a defrag, (which has been known to disrupt the settings for me.) so I'm puzzled as to what has happened.
Can anyone figure this out? While it is not a big deal, it is something I've been puzzled over for a while.
Thanks for any help anyone can give me.