Welcome to Gaia! ::

I apologise now, as this is going to be rather long.

I am having a rather annoying problem with "The Sims 2". I believe the problem occured ever since I installed "H&M Fashion Stuff", but being a huge sims collector, I am hoping there is a way to resolve the problem without uninstalling "Fashion Stuff", and want to make sure this expansion pack is the problem before I uninstall.

My problem started when I used to load up my game. When I loaded my custom neighbourhood, the loading screen flashed on and off, and I couldn't see my neighbourhood, but I could see the names of my families in their houses. I turned down/off a few graphics options, and this seemed to solve this. However, my graphics card is a lot more advanced than "The Sims" games require, so I am confused by this.

My main problem now is during gameplay. It can happen at the most random times, and can last up to 2 minutes each time. When I am playing my game, the screen randomly goes blue, and the cursor (shown as the loading egg timer) appears. This happens every time I play my game, and never stops. Sometimes, it can happen so much, the screen flashes black and blue, and my monitor tries to configure the screen, as it goes out of place all the time. By this time, I am unable to close down the game, or minimize the game to close it that way. My only alternative is to turn off my computer via the on/off button.

I am very aware my computer is advanced enough to play these games. I have emailed EA Games many times, and received helpful information, but which has so far failed to help me.

I rang up the helpline, and they suggested I reinstall Windows. I will do this in the next few days, as I am desperate to fix this problem, and will try anything. I've also been told to try turning my computer into "Safe Mode", but I am not so clever in the computer department, and am not completely sure how to do this. However I am taking my computer into a shop to reinstall Windows, so I can ask them to try installing in "Safe Mode" to see if this works.

I have uninstalled all unecessary programmes on my computer, deleted all shortcuts on my desktop that wern't needed, run frequent Virus scans with Norton and SpySweeper, and do defrags and disk cleanups often. I am certain these aren't the problem, but I decided to try disabling my AntiVirus software when I played the game, and it didnt show me the blue loading screen for about an hour, but then continued and completely crashed my computer. However, this was only a one time thing, and doesn't let me play for that long anymore.

In conclusion, I have no idea what to do now. I have tried everything in all my emails/phonecalls, and have been in many forums to see if anyone could help me with my problem. If anyone knows the solution, it will be greatly appreciated biggrin

I'm wondering if it may be possible that your graphics card may be too advanced. I know that may sound odd but there have been reports of some of the latest Nvidia cards not working with the game and having it crash to a blue screen where it stays and the player can't exit the game.
I find it odd if this hasn't been mentioned to you by the EA technical help team as there were lots of threads in the BBS about it but then sometimes I've found from experience they don't always know what they are on about.

P.S. this should be in the Q&A section and will be moved there now.

....that's exactly the problem for me. o_o I got the Nvidia 8600 for Christmas and that's when the problem started. I neglected that as a possibility...I never thought my card could be too advanced.

You wouldn't happen to know any patches, solutions or something? :'D Aside from removing the card, because that's not happening.