Downgrade to XP to play Sims 2?

[kawaii_hitsuji]

My friends brand new Laptop came with Vista, but had an Intel graphics card (She didn't have the option of anything else - stupid Dell). But anyway I was wondering if downgrading to XP (which I know how to do) would make the Sims 2 playable.

Here are her current system spec's;

RAM - 2GB
Processor - 2.4 GHz
Memory - 160 GB
Graphic's - Intel Graphic's Media Accelerator X3100

[callistra]

It will probably help some but it will never be really great game play. The integrated graphics chipset is the real killer, and it can't be upgraded. I think it would certainly be worth a try, assuming that laptop will support XP.

I would first make sure that she can get her hands on all the drivers necessary to run XP. Sometimes downgrading to XP will cause certain hardware not to work, and almost always will cause certain non essential processes not to work. For example, I could install XP on my Sony laptop but I would lose the functionality of all the multi-media keys on the keyboard. So she'll just have to do some research about this particular laptop and XP. Dell has their own tech support forums so that may be a good place to start.

Some other things she can do to make the game more playable:
- make sure your game and all expansions are patched (There is one available for the base game, one for each expansion, and even one for one of the stuff packs)
- Update drivers
- Close all unnecessary programs while trying to play (anti virus, messengers, web browsers, etc) and use msconfig to help clean out unnecessary processes: http://modthesims2.com/showpost.php...45&postcount=21
- Turn down in game settings as low as possible
- Remove any custom content
- Uninstall your expansions and just play with the base game

Here's a good tweak guide for Vista: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

[whiterider]

Have a read of this, too: Game Help:Onboard Graphics

[kawaii_hitsuji]

Yeah I read through everything about onboard graphic's on this site and sadly nothing worked (or it worked for like 30 minutes) She even tried just playing the base game which worked for a grand total of 45 minutes :(

Followed that nice Vista tweak guide (cleared my computer up nice, but sadly it didn't clear up my friends enough to play)

Anyway, since it wouldn't hurt to try to downgrade I'll give it shot. Besides if it doesn't work out (the downgrading part) there's always that 'reboot disk' that came with the Laptop (you know the factory setting one:))

I'll make a post if the downgrade worked or not so that if others are having the same problem (I found a post where someone had almost the same computer spec's as my friends but I can't find it anymore) they'll have a solution (maybe - if this actually works)

[whiterider]

There isn't really a specific fix for this kind of problem - it's a sliding scale of what your computer can handle vs. what you're trying to do, the trick is to get them about equal.
I hope you get somewhere with XP. :)

[callistra]

If it works for a certain amount of time and then crashes it may be overheating.

You can leave this program running while you play the game and it will record the maximum temperature that your hardware reaches: http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Play it as long as you can.. 30minutes would be good.

[kawaii_hitsuji]

I managed to downgrade my friends computer to XP (SP2) and so far we've installed University and Nightlife. Everything has been working great so far. Were going to try to install FreeTime next (cause she likes that EP alot) and see how things go from there.

So if anybody has this issue (Vista with an intell graphics thingy) downgrading to XP is an option to make the Sims 2 playable (at least up to nightlife so far). Just keep in mind downgrading isn't easy and should be done by someone who knows what their doing (at least that was the case with my friends computer). If you had XP before and upgraded to Vista then downgrading should be a snap.

I'll keep ya posted on what EP's have worked so far.