Sims 2 Graphics Crashing

Factual Questions
1

My Dell laptop (Inspiron 8500 with a Mobility Radeon 9000 display(?)) is crashing regularly when playing Sims 2. The Microsoft recovery message indicates that it is an issue with the ATI Graphics driver, and suggests that I go there to download the latest driver. I don’t see any new drivers there.

I’ve turned down the graphics options within Sims2 with no luck.

Any advice?

2

Have you…

  1. Updated your DirectX?
  2. Patched your copy of Sim 2?
  3. Make sure that the power management of the laptop is not interfering with your game?

Try asking around if anyone else have the same problem. Did you just patch your graphics card drivers? Sometimes, games are incompataible with the latest patch (sad, but true) and it will take some time for the games to catch up.

3

Yes (finally!).

Yes!

yes.

Still having the same problem. Anyone other suggestions anyone?

4

[QUOTE=shelbo I don’t see any new drivers there.
[/QUOTE]

The last new drivers came out June 28th, do you have them? I had a problem last week with the graphics getting scrambled (bunch of colored squares and color outlines on things that shouldn’t have them) as I went into Sims’ houses and realized that I hadn’t updated my drivers since March. The new ones fixed the problem.

5

By “last new drivers”, what do you mean? The most recent version of Direct X? Or something else? My direct x version is 9.0(c). Is that not the most recent?

6

No not direct X, your ATI drivers for your Radeon graphics card.

go to start and then run. Type in Dxdiag and press run. A box will pop up with your computer’s specs. Go to the tab that says “display” and look at the box on the right. The line that says "date: " tells you when you last updated your drivers (or rather the release date of the last drivers, not necessarily when you installed them). If it’s a date before June 28th, 2005 go to the link up above and find the drivers for your operating system and install them.

You don’t need to install the newest ones the moment they come out, and if you’re not having problems you probably shouldn’t, but if you are having problems it’s a good idea to install the newest ones and see if that solves the problem.

7

Thanks so much elfkin. My driver is from December 2002, so I hope I can impose on you a little more. When I go to Radeon drivers for Windows XP, I get the following list:

Knowledge Base
ATI Customer Care > Drivers and Software > Windows XP > RADEON >

RADEON
Display Drivers and Software for RADEON Products

  1. CATALYST 5.7 Windows XP - Driver Download

  2. ATI Multimedia Center 9.08

  3. HYDRAVISION - For RADEON and Mobile ATI Products

  4. CATALYST CREW Feedback

Do I want the Catalyst driver? Or is there something else?
Thanks again for your help.

8

You want the link marked ‘CATALYST’. That’ll take you to a page offering two drivers - one using the regular Control Panel, one using ATI’s CATALYST Control panel. For updating purposes it doesn’t matter which one you pick, but for simplicity’s sake you might want the first type.

Download it, run it and reboot. Chances are your problem will disappear.

9

As for as I know, ATI doesn’t offer drivers for most Mobility Radeon products (x700 and x800 excepted).

Instead, try these drivers from Dell’s website.