SIMS2..... Grrrr...

[JiggaWatt]

Since I have been playing this game, I have been getting random lockups, and major display issues, etc. I am running the game at 1024x768x32 with the screen refresh set to 75Hz as is my desktop.

I don't know how many of you out there have ATI cards and play this game with it but I have sent countless crash logs from the VPU recovery tool to ATI from the numerous crashes in an attempt to recover itself. In some cases it will be able to fully recover but sometimes it will not.

First of all, I have Win XP Home Ed SP2 installed which therefore has my DirectX verion up-to-date.
Secondly I have an Abit AV8 mobo with the latest BIOS as it is a relatively new board and the BIOS has not been updated yet.
Third I have updated the VIA driver to its latest as well. Fourth I have used the latest ATI drivers WITH the 'control center' AND without AND I have reverted to earlier drivers and control panels to experiment with the possible solutions and to no avail. I have also used third-party drivers and the same result.
Fifth I have the latest driver updates for my soundcard. Better than 98% of the time I WILL still have sound when the errors/crash, screen corruption(s) occur. The other 2% is prob a combination of the data being jammed between the crashing vid card drivers and the sound card trying to send and recieve its data as well and everything ending up in a **** train wreck.

I have not noticed any temperature issues as my rig has zero overclocked parts in it. None of the temps get way above normal.

I had some issues with D3 but nothing quite as regular and eratic as this. When I say erratic I mean that the screen all together will get a translucent vertical bar down one side and the rest of the screen will be pixelated looking. Regular in the sense that I can almost count on the fact of it crashing within 5-10 min into a session.

As you can see below I don't have a shrimpy setup, nothing that would cause me not to be able to 'handle' the game. Everything falls within the guidelines set by Maxis/EA, whoever... The only thing I can think of is that maybe my vid card might be getting 'old'.
Once before I had a serious crash and went to the Online Crash Analysis area on Microsoft's website and it described it as a driver issue, display adapter. If there are any others out there having the same issues with ATI.... HOLLA! I NEEDS MEEZ SOME AID!

I'm bout to buy a new vid card out of frustration to see if it solves the problem! :mad: :confused: :eek:

Sys spec:
Win XP Home Ed SP2
Abit AV8
AMD64 3500+
1024MB PC3200 Crucial Ballistix
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
120GB WesternDigital HD
SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by JiggaWatt
Once before I had a serious crash and went to the Online Crash Analysis area on Microsoft's website and it described it as a driver issue, display adapter.

Try to uninstall your display driver and use an uninstall tool, because the normal uninstall process doesnt complertely uninstall the driver. I dont really knoa any uninstall programs for ATI, because I use NVIDIA, but you can try "Driver Removal Tool", I think it also supports ATI. And dont forget to rebpoot, before you reinstall the driver.

[CrazyCrusher]

Use this tool to remove your drivers, MrBurns is correct when you remove your older drivers using the standard way it does not completely remove them, this tool should do that.

When you install your new drivers try turning of VPU recovery. make sure fastwrite is turned off in your Video card display options check all your software and Hardware to see if there is any patches for SP2.



http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745

[PacNW CE]

Being as MS has a well documented prolblem with games and SP2, it suprises me not that they would pass the blame onto the graphics driver. EA is deserving of your wrath too.

[MrBurns]

I also meant driver cleaner. i only thought, that it was called driver removal tool.

[JiggaWatt]

Mmmmkay.. I'll give those a try and post updates...

:(

[JiggaWatt]

I followed the steps by CrazyCrusher and I also did use the DriverCleaner but to no avail.:(

I wish I were a software engineer so I would have some clue as to what exactly is causing the problem.

This is killing me man.... :mad:

[MrBurns]

maybe its a problem w/ sp2.

try to uninstall sp2, if possible (it is only possible, if you didnt buy a winxp-cd that already contained sp2 and also when you install the downloaded version, you must decide if you want to be able to uninstall it, because if you disable the uninstall option, you save a few 100MB of space on your hdd).

[JiggaWatt]

You konw I was beginning to think that might be the issue considering I do not recall having this many problems with games prior to SP2.

I guess this will be one hell of an experiment. The only fear I have is removing SP2 compromizing the stability of the system overall. Having that gaping hole in the OS.

Anyway, all I have to do is use the add/remove from the control panel correct?

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by JiggaWatt
Anyway, all I have to do is use the add/remove from the control panel correct?

yes

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by JiggaWatt
When I say erratic I mean that the screen all together will get a translucent vertical bar down one side and the rest of the screen will be pixelated looking. Regular in the sense that I can almost count on the fact of it crashing within 5-10 min into a session.

The verticla bar could be a vertical toolbar in windows. like i sometimes see a horizontal toolbar from windows in doom3 (i dont have sims2). however the toolbar doesnt look like a toolbar in doom3, it looks different.

if you dont understand what i mean:

http://members.chello.at/edith.matuskovics/toolbar.jpg

http://members.chello.at/edith.matuskovics/toolbar_doom3.jpg

the different sizes of the toolbars is because i use a lower resolution in doom3 and because i resized the desktop screenshot.

[JiggaWatt]

Yeah I have seen those 'phantom toolbars' or 'phantom aol imer buddy signed on' things but this one that I speak of is about a 1/4 of the screen size from left to right and is translucent yellow. The image on the right will look like those tiled puzzels that you have to put in order to form the scrambled image. The whole game is frozen as well as all ability to gain control of my rig.

The phenomonon you captured I will get once in a blue moon and it will quickly dissapear not to mention its effect on the game is minimal and does not significantly affect its performance/playability.


I wonder if heat IS becoming an issue. I have had the card since its coming onto the market and knowing that it is getting a bit more of a challenge to render the images on-screen that are more complex than previous gen games....

And the speculation continues....

[JiggaWatt]

BTW, Thx MrBurns for the help thus far.

:-@ lol

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by JiggaWatt
The phenomonon you captured I will get once in a blue moon and it will quickly dissapear not to mention its effect on the game is minimal and does not significantly affect its performance/playability.

on my system, the phenomen only appears, when the toolbar is set to be always in foreground (if i translated this right from german). but it doesnt disapear. but when the toolbar is not set to be always in foreground, i dont get it at all.

[JiggaWatt]

Well I have uninstalled SP2 and to no avail. Just when I think things are going my way the game freezes and then so does my system. Once I return to the desktop following a reboot I will get the nice dialog box stating that the Radeon 9700 Pro driver has caused a failure.

I have picked up on the possibility that EA has a bit of a liking to Intel based chipsets over AMD. True?

yay.... :( :mad:

[MrBurns]

i have an amd based chipset (nforce2) and i never had problems w/ ea games. except once ihad a problem w/ c&c: generals, but i solved it buy reinstalling chipset- and graphicsdrivers.