Crashing 5-10 minutes in! - Help!

[ThePaulrus94]

I bought the sims 3 plus pets last night. It installed (base game and pets) fine and it started great. The graphics were good and not laggy. I entered crate a sim and everything worked great. The load times between tabs was great and no lag. After about 5 to 10 minutes the game froze. I tried again and it happened again. I uninstalled pets and it froze the same way with only the base game installed.

I've heard some people have had a similar problem with the new update. My graphics seemed fine so i don't think it'd be that but maybe, that's the only thing can think of. Thank you for any help.

My specs: (let me know if more info is needed)
Dell Inspiron 15R
Intel Core i7 3612QM (6M Cache, up to 3.1 ghz)
8 GB ram
1 TB Had Drive
Intel HD Graphics 4000

[whiterider]

Do you have switchable graphics?

[ThePaulrus94]

As in like two graphics cards or whatever? No i don't believe so

[ThePaulrus94]

Yea I found out how to check under device manager and Intel HD 4000 is the only one. So, I guess I don't.

[ThePaulrus94]

I might try uploading up to the last patch since the newest one has been causing problems for people. Any other ideas?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Intel HD graphics are very problematic and really shouldn't be used with TS3, especially with the Pets expansion (but even with the base game alone, it's very weak and unsuitable). Your best bet to fix this is to get a new graphics card.

[Belzader]

That would be hard to do HystericalParoxysm, as the Dell Inspiron 15R is a laptop :P

[ThePaulrus94]

Im not trying to make myself feel good but I almost feel that it's a glitch. So I think I may just wait for the next patch. The intro runs great and everything up until 10 minutes into create a sim every time. "Can you run it" says that I more than meet and exceed all the game requirements. I'll keep waiting and trying.

[Belzader]

Can you run it is not very reliable.

To give you an example of how "bad" it rates your computer.
I ones checked for a game with an older computer i had, it said my CPU didn't match what that game required.

Reason: It had a AMD but site compared for a Intel, even though my CPU had much higher Mhz it still thought it was below game requirments.

[ThePaulrus94]

Yea, I've kinda given up. It probably is my graphics card now because I tried to play it yesterday and the character turned all black, some other things were black too and then it froze. I guess now I know to never buy Intel graphics in the future, because they suck haha.