we had a winXP sp2 system, directX 9c, ATI radeon 7000 series AGP, 32MB, intel p4 2.6GHz, 1GB RAM.
sims 2 would lock up hard every so often (5-15 mins.) to a black screen. no mouse/keyboard support, have to hit the reset button on the front of the computer. tried mucking with AGP speeds, didn't seem to make any difference. lowering the graphics aperture size to less than 32MB made the problem worse, and playing with directX direct3D settings didn't seem to make any difference, except for visual quality.
the suggestion made earlier on this thread to go all the way back to ATI catalyst drivers version 4.8 was a very good one! we had been trying to use catalyst 5.10 drivers, which is about 7 or 8 releases higher than 4.8.
i suggest you ensure sure the ATI catalyst 4.8 driver .exe file you finally find and download is scanned for the latest viruses, and i suggest you actually start the installer to ensure it will run... if the installer crashes or stops with an error right away, do not continue with the procedure here, as it will leave your video card in a pretty unusable state! double-click on the .exe file you downloaded, then hit the 'cancel' button when it asks if you want to continue. you will want to run through a more complete uninstall of your old video driver software before installing these 4.8 drivers.
here's the procedure we used:
- download a copy of ATI's catalyst drivers, version 4.8. you may have to look around the web for this if you can't find it at http://atitech.ca .
- right-click 'my computer', click 'properties', click 'hardware' tab, click 'device manager' button
- click the plus sign (+) beside 'display adapters' in this list
- right-click on your ATI card, click 'un-install'
- click yes to the warning
- when it asks you to reboot, click NO (do not restart now).
- click the 'start' button, go to 'settings', then 'control panel'
- double-click 'add/remove programs'
- highlight, then and click 'remove', on your ATI video drivers. if you have a slot in that list called 'ATI software uninstaller', use that; it should work for uninstalling everything that should be deleted.
- the system asks you to restart, this time click 'YES' (restart now)
- when your machine boots back up, it will ask you to provide drivers for your video card. you want to hit the 'Cancel' button here.
- run the ATI catalyst 4.8 driver installer .exe file
- let it reboot your system when it is done installing; click 'YES' when you are asked to restart.
after following that procedure, we re-ran the directX 9.0c installer just to ensure it didn't want to update anything (it didn't), then we ran sims 2. it works great now, we ran it for over an hour, and did not have any more system freezes. thanks for the help!
