I feel bugged about this problem recently. My monitor just shows nothing(game still running) after playing TS2 for 5mins to 2hrs. I downloaded Nvidia Forceware 77.72 driver from guru3d.com. Despite trying different Forceware drivers, the problem still stays there. Switching on and off the monitor does not off. I never overclock my graphic card but i do overclock my CPU. Rivatuner and Powerstrip is installed on my computer, but i never open it now and does not load at startup. Anyone can help me please?? This happens only to TS2.

Machine Specs:
Mobo: ASUS CULS2
Pentium 3 866mhz overclock to 1040mhz
Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 440 using Nvidia Forceware 77.72
Philips 107T 17" CRT monitor
Windows XP Build 2600 "never updated once"

This happened to me once when I upgraded the driver on my Nivida card. I had forgotten to completely uninstall the old driver before installing the new driver. Once I did that and reinstalled the new driver everything was fine. I'm not sure that is the problem in your case however.

thanks gk4495, now i try to remove all forceware drivers, and install them. Hope this solves the problem

if it is not your graphics drivers you can always hit ctrl alt delter and go to processes and find sims 2 and end process

Try turning down hardware acceleration for your video card. It'll be under settings>advanced>troubleshooting.

you could also try installing the official drivers from http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_71.89.html
i got a Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 420 it never gives any trouble i even recently put all my settings up to the max except for the resolution and no probs.

CherryCoke3102: I cannot see anything on my screen at all and the only way is to restart my computer.

thanks for all your help, but my problem cannot be solved through throughly deleting graphic card drivers and reinstalling them ( I used detonator R.I.P. after uninstalling it) Testing out whether changing hardware acceleration will help.

I had that happen to me a couple times...

turns out I picked up a virus from somewhere in a download for the sims... the Sims2pack Clean Installer found it... (it was labelled as an empty file) havent had the problem since

If you don't have anything on your screen then there are only two reasons. It is either a bad graphics card or the monitor is going out. I reciently had to replace my old monitor as it started to get washed out colors. You don't say how old your monitor is nor what type it is. Most monitors have a life expectancy of about 8-10 years.
The best way to test this without spending mega bucks for naught is to ask a friend to borrow their monitor. Hook it up then try your computer. If you get a normal screen (Window XP has an auto detect for new hardware) then it is your monitor and needs to be replaced. If you don't get anything on the other monitor then it is probably your graphics card.

i think we need to take you back to basics for this problem so here goes a couple of questions to find out more; if you think you answered these before please answer again
1 what exactly can you see on the monitor(is it a dead screen ie: turned off or can you see a cursor as if the game is exiting for a long time) ?
2 i understand the monitor is flat screen is this correct?
3 what motherboard r u using?
4 do any other programmes run on your pc with/without probs?
5 why are you overclocking?
6 how old is the graphics card?
7 have you considered/tried using system restore
8 what did you install before the problem (programmes or hardware)?
9 have you had any other error messages from any programme on your pc?
10 if you have a tft flat screen monitor is the graphics card compatible with it?

i ask these questions as it gives us a little more detail and an insight to your pc i or somebody else may be able to put our finger on the problem and help sooner rather than just keep guessing on a limited amount of info.

mike190870:
1. dead screen
2. CRT, not flat screen
3. ASUS CUSL2
4. They run without probs
5. To squeeze out perfomance on my ageing computer
6. 3-5 years and running without any problem
7. Nope
8. Daemon Tools, for other things
9. Nothing except occasional blue screen of death during bootup.

hi kyjj911
ok thanks for the info i'll answer back with numbers i think. or i'll get lost
1 as Numbnumb said try a different monitor to see what happens
2 yep i now know its a crt (when i did a quick search on the net it came back with a tft monitor with the same name)
3 motherboard i got 1 of those they can be quite a reasonable board shame about the age
4 ok thats good
5 try to stop overclocking otherwise 1 day you will find a dead pc
6 about the same age as my asus cusl2 board
7 try to reset everything using system restore that may also help also defrag the hardrive.
8 ahh that stuff
9 blue screen of death aghhhhhhhh used to happen with mine before it went into semi retirement (could be hardware issue)try upgradeing the bios.


a couple of other ideas that may help update the bios, update evey single driver file you can possibly find. find another procesor (you may be lucky to find a decent second hand procesor to fit see below )
Processor
Only FCPGA Socket 370 processors are supported: the Intel Pentium III with 100/133 MHz bus and Intel Celeron with 66 MHz and 100 MHz bus

if you cant get any monitor to test with other than your own there is a possibility you could try with a small portible television pluged into your graphics card(it's a bit fiddly to set up my mx420 card suports this idea i'm thinking maybe your MX 440 has that option) otherwise you can also remove your graphics card and use the onboard agp plug with your monitor and try that but you have said that other programmes work fine and sounds like sims is the only thing that causes the crash so i do think unless you can verify the monitor you have nothing to lose by trying what i have suggested hpoe this has been helpful let us know if you find more info or get ti fixed ok.
oh and also make sure you got all the updates from windows

1.Lowering the graphics accleration to Disable all cursor and advanced drawing accelerations helps, but does not totally solve the problem
2. I do not have any small TVs to test with as I have sold off my last small TV
3. I will see if i need to update my bios as i admit i am a noob at updating bios and other stuff
***4. When I switch off the computer using the power button and switch it on again, there is a popup stating that the graphic card could not complete the drawing operation and whether I want to report the problem to M$. Now I know which component to blame: The Graphic Card!!!!! :smash: :smash:
I see if using older display drivers help or not.***

hello kyjj911
i think th bios update is probably a very good option. i am very surprised that the graphics card you got is even compayible with the motherboard considering the age
so
1 the graphics card is suitable for the game
2 the motherboard needs a walking stick it is a bit of an old lady now
3 did you stop overclocking
have you got the handbook for the motherboard?
i have one somewhere but cant find it but it's about an inch thick and gives a lot more info than most hanbooks do
before you attempt to update bios backup everything you need just in case preferably onto a cd if poss
read all instructions for the bios upgrade, i have updated the bios for my cusl motherboard but it was a while ago but if you need help i dont think yuo'll have too many probs

I have the same problem like kyjj911 . It all started 2 months ago and iI had it 3 or 4 times (this morning too), I realy don't know what to do and what is to blame but I hate it, I lost all my work and my game was running soo smooth...

Un-install of driver dose not fully remove all, it leaves some junk that xp stores for backup and on reboot it put this back.

This can cause problems For nvidia use the attached tool to remove the junk left.

un-install nividia dont reboot use tool then shutdown then rebooting and re-install.

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kyjj911

1.Lowering the graphics accleration to Disable all cursor and advanced drawing accelerations helps, but does not totally solve the problem

This is strange, But sounds like a directX issue.

You can't uninstall DirectX
Well there is a tool and a way but its not easy you will need the tool
Search google,
The WinXP CD,
and its done in Safemode.

Id place a bet that its a direct draw error of the directX

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If needed for bios confilics.
Open the pc take out the batterie for 1min then put it back this will force the Bios to reset.
It may fix it if its AGP or a IRQ error

If you dont have a rar extractor, for a free file unziper goto.
http://www.altools.net/

Amprenta

CRT colour gun's do trip out to a black screen when overloaded (hot) this happens when they are old.

The power transformer can cause this two a CRT only has a life of 3 years.

Iv been through 1 every 3 years im up to my 4th,

To test the PC
Id say take the tower to a friend and try it out if all's well your up for a monitor.

If you still have a conflict have you done anythin new to the pc?

Oh it will start to get more freqeint if its the monitor.

Using the Nvidia Removal tool mickyss posted after uninstalling the 77.72 driver and installed the 77.72(Latest Nvidia Driver supporting GF 7800 GTX) again.
Results: Problem not solved

I have found a tool called DirectX Happy Uninstall v3.4 which uninstalls the current DirectX driver and rolling back to the one which comes originally in XP. I wonder that works or not. **Keeps finger crossed**

have you got an older graphics card that you have used before. i think you are going to have to find out if the one you are using is compatible with your motherboard.
also try checking in control panel just in case here how
1open control panal
2open system
3open device manager
4under display adapters what does it say
heres a screen shot of what you need to look for
as you can see mine has 2 one is the mx 420 which im using.The one unerneath that is the onboard graphics that i have disabled
this way there are no hardware conflicts

:smash:

mike: I have only one display adapter. :D
mickyss: I know there are alot of DirectX uninstall tools floating on the internet and i just used DirectX 9 Uninstaller for XP / .NET and when i get to phase 3, error popped up and i closed it, killing the whole app. But when I restarted the comp successfully, and ran dxdiag, it gave me directX version:4.0sumthing and it ran sims 2 just fine, except the problem never solved at all. I am thinking whether to do an repair installation of XP or running the directX remover again. Anyone interested in my dxdiag file can take a look at it. Usually I use rar, but for easier access to more ppl to download it i used zip.

try downloading the latest dirextx version & see what choices you get and install from that preferably with out uninstalling old version
try this link for bios upgrade:
http://support.asus.com/download/do...SLanguage=en-us
for bios update & manual theres 5 mummy boards in the series to choose from so you'll need to look for yours carefully
also this link may be helpfull
http://support.asus.com/support/faq...ModelName=CUSL2
also please i'm asking nicely stop overclocking while we attempt to solve this problem :bump:
you can always overclock agin after it's fixed :smash:
worse case scenario is reinstall windows could take 2-3 hours but the amount of time spent so far maybe its a good option,
ther doesnt seem to be any thing showing wrong in the file you uploaded

Ok mike now I have resetted my processor to the default speed when it came out from the box. I have installed Nvidia Forceware 77.30(modified driver) which enabled AGP 4X for me(i used to rin in 2X ) will try TS2 again before doing a repair installation.

Now I have done a repair installation of WinXP Pro and setting processor speed to default(866mhz), I will test it out and the report will be out after I finished testing it. :D

TEST RESULTS

1st test: After one hour of playing in TS2 from 4:10pm to 5:15pm, all is fine.
2nd test: After just 10 minutes, the problem resurfaces again. :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: And I never terminate nvsvc32.exe, maybe that is the problem.
3rd test: **Will be posted here soon** :howdy:

re:nvsvc32.exe take a look at this link there seems to be mixed opinions. its not really an answer but i just dont know
http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/p...vsvc32.exe.html
as far as i could tell is : when i looked around the cusl mummy board is 4x enabled & backwards compatible to 2x
but i think the prob is the mummy board is an old lady & the graphics card is a young lady. so the mummy board wants to sit down & knit a scarf, the graphics card wants to go out and party.
so basically i think you have a compatibility issue between the mummy board & graphics card.