I fail at computers. Help please!!

[mmaxwell]

Um, this is my first time posting here, but everyone seems very nice, so...I need help!!

I just got a lovely shiny new PC -

160GB hard drive, (think this has been partitioned but not sure)
Windows Media Centre 2005,
16x DVD-ROM
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+,
1.00 GHz, 960 MB of RAM,
NVIDIA Ge Force 6159 LE and 
RealTek HD Sound
(That's as many

Comments

[druid_va]

Eh, your system specs seem to be barely passing for running the game... I don't think your video card is supported (it's not on the supported list). My guess would be between the borderline specs and the video card your computer just can't play the game.

Either that, or you have a virus/spyware or just bad drivers for your video card. You may need to try scanning for virus/spyware and then completely unintalling your video/card drivers and installing them again from scratch.

Other than that, upgrading your RAM and Vid card is all I can think of.

[mmaxwell]

My old PC was a Dell Optiplex with 512MB of RAM and a Pentium 3 processor, the type of which escapes me at the moment, so I'm a bit baffled as to why it won't run for longer than 10 minutes on the new PC. It does work perfectly in that timespace though, no lag or loading issues.

I know I do need more RAM though, so that's something I can try.

Also I mistyped the graphics card, it's an NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE. Don't know if that does anything!

[druid_va]

Honestly (in my exp) Sims2 is a game where the vid card can make or break your comps ability to play.

These are the supported cards (as of BV)
Supported video cards:

ATI Radeon(TM) series 8500 or better (9600 or greater required for Vista)
8500, All-In-Wonder 8500
9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800
X300, X600, x700, X800, x850
X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950
NVIDIA(R) Quadro(TM) series
Quadro, Quadro2, Quadro4

NVIDIA GeForce series GeForce2 GTS and better (GeForce 6200 or greater required for Vista)

GeForce 2, 2 GTS
GeForce 3, 3 Ti
GeForce 4, 4 Ti, 4200, 4600, 4800, MX 420, 440, 460
GeForce FX 5200, 5500, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, 5950
GeForce PCX 5300, 5900
GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800
GeForce 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950
S3 GammaChrome
S18 Pro
S18 Ultra
You can see your card is not listed as supported so that could easily be your problem.

You can find the full system reqs here.

[nameless_cricke]

I can attest that an ATI radeon xpress 200 series card works fine, even though it is not in the supported card list. ...I am missing fishes though... :D

[dogbite12]

You ran Sims 2 on a Pentium III?

[mmaxwell]

Sorry, just checked again, Pentium 4. I'm an idiot!

[sawcat]

It looks like you have onboard graphics and not a stand alone video card. If you've been to Nvidia and gotten the most recent drivers from them (if its brand new laptop, you have to go through the manufactuerer), and made sure to remove the old one then install the new driver (they may also have beta drivers to try), the only thing probably you can do is to uninstall some eps unless you want to do some upgrades. Seasons and BV are going to be most graphic intensive, but if you really like those, you can try uninstalling other ones, just uninstall, try booting the game and see how it goes.

You might also look to see if your old computer had a stand alone video card, the model and how it connects to see if it could possibly work in the newer computer for the time. It might not, but if it is compatible, it might get you playing until you can get a better one.

[itlandm]

As the message says, there seems to be a problem with you video card driver. This COULD be set off by something else: Your video "card" (which is actually just a small chip on the main board) shares part of the main memory rather than coming with it its own memory as real video cards do. This is why your configuration is listed as having 960 MB of RAM rather than 1024 (RAM comes in exponentials of 2, such as 32, 64, 128, 512 and 1024). In this case the card uses 64 or the 1024, so there is 960 left. If a program tries to use the same block of RAM as the video chip, disaster ensues. Sims 2 is indeed a candidate for this kind of trouble, as it does not officially support this class of video chips, with shared memory

[mmaxwell]

Actually, it's a desktop, but it's small and I mean small!
It's starting to sound like I need a couple of upgrades - I have a fab techie friend who sorts out my PC stuff, so he may have some spare RAM and a decent graphics card floating about.

[itlandm]

Well, if it is a desktop then normally the Omegadrivers should work, and they are free. Adding a graphics card in a very small computer could cause problems with overheating, but if not it will almost surely improve your game. Perhaps you could try borrowing one from your friend for a couple days of extended gaming and see if it takes the heat?

[vaxwell]

If your graphics are onboard (ie, a small graphics chip on your motherboard, instead of a stand alone graphics card that slots into the lower PCI/PCIe slots on your motherboard) it's likely that it's not quite up to speed enough to play the sims with a tonne of expansions... Onboard graphics also borrow from the main RAM because they don't have their own video memory, so that could be slowing your computer down as well... especially if you have Vista (Vista takes up twice as much power as XP does, so if you have a Vista machine, double your RAM or it will be slower than your old XP machine)

You can buy a graphics card that does the job really cheap these days. Also, RAM is pretty darn cheap too, so get yourself another 1GB or so. :) It's not hard to install the card and the ram yourself either. :)

[mmaxwell]

It's running on XP Media Centre - I didn't want Vista because I don't entirely trust it and it eats hard-drive space like a demon.

[vaxwell]

Ahh sorry. I wasn't sure what media centre was. I assumed it was some sort of windows media player/movie maker/slide show program. :D

Guess you learn something new every day.