BTW, thank you for your input. :D

you can try it but it probly wont show up, sorry everyone kept goin on about u having onother on board card, he he.

you could have a virus or a corrupt peice of hardware, there are endless possibilitys, but seeing as you getting a "barcode" thing on ure monitor, there is a high possibility that your graphics is to blame for this problem. good luck finidng a solution, ill have a talk to a few mates of mine.

Realtek AC'97 Audio card...This might be on board sound?....Most P.C's I've seen have this chip set as on-board. Sometimes sound drivers can cause issues, as computers use sound to load games etc. Remember the old ZX Spectrum's and the like?
I would suggest making sure you have the right drivers, sometimes you can actually upgrade the drivers too much, and this can cause conflicts with the hardware.
I recently had to roll back a driver, as it caused problems with media center. Try updating the Direct x for your sound chip too. Hope this helps. (Remeber to create restore points before any updating though just in case)

*Edit* Just a thought. I believe Service Pack 2 can also cause hardware conflicts. If you have installed service pack 2 onto your new P.C, but didn't have it on the old one, it could be a good idea to uninstall it temporarily, and try out the game again.


*Edit* 01:14 G.M.T. I've found this forum debate about your graphics card, seems a lot of people playing 3D games are having problems with graphic corruption, and it's pointing to over heating...Have a look at the page if you like, and draw your own conclusions..
http://www.techsupportforum.com/com...ic/14877-1.html

thats an idea, while your at it you could also check your other hardware, such as network adaptors, extra USB chips...etc

Well done andcrab

Why thank you Ali_2K...:D...I must try thinking more when I'm this tired! Lol

You get upgraded to Lab assistant after 50 posts. < Ali_2K

Love your avatar < catnahat9 :D

lol, i really should be in bed, but theres too many people to try and help, i put emphysis on "Try"

PS, what did you do to get upgraded to lab assistant?

Had you dowloaded any custom content since you upgraded your system? Maybe a bad hack file in the game matches an important command file on your system? there is s tool called datgen that has a file maid.. . or maybe Im just stupid. Sometimes problems are more simpler than you think

when you upgraded/rebuilt your pc did you reinstall windows? or did you take your old hardrive and attach to your new mummy board without doing a clean reinstall?

Everything was a clean install. OS, programs, etc. Each time I uninstalled/reinstalled the Sims2 I went through the registry to delete anything I thought might be residual damage.

Thanks for everyone's help. I'm starting to think that it really might be overheating, and that it's the fact that I have a Radeon 9600 XT (apparently those are crappy for 3D games).

If anyone else has any tips or theories, I'll be glad to hear 'em!

can you use system restore to go back to when you had no probs maybe before you installed sims? editing the registry is a dangerous thing to do if you delete the wrong thing then that'll cause more probs.
i took a look around on the net for your prob all i got back was overheating and power supplies not being adequate.

the game just might not accept the video card you have- the patch they put out was supposed to fix that porblem with one such video card....

Unfortunately the problems began immediately, even without me installing my custom content. The game worked great for maybe 4 days (four days after I finished building my pc) and then it just started crashing.

Hmm... you know, I'm having troubles with my ATi RADEON 9600 All-In-Wonder graphics card. It always overheats and stuff so I had to remove the side of the compy box and put an ACTUAL fan beside it.

Yeah, and I always get this stupid "VPU Recover" box that pops up... anyone else know about that? I guess I could make my own thread, but I haven't even thought about searching for that yet! I'm going to do that now! ^_^

And like andracab said, it could be the sound card as well. I have to use headphones and plug them into the front headphone jack so it won't overheat.

Wow I just realized how many problems I have with my computer... XD

This probably won't help, but maybe there is an error on your CD(s) when you install it, so maybe you should take it back to the store where you got it, and exchange your copy for a new copy of the games. Hope that helps!

Just a thought...
I recently swappd out mother boards on my computer and after doing so TS2 began acting strangely (no crashing though) after playing the game for a while(different times depending on what I was doing) the games frame rate would drop and all of my textures would get blurry. It was really weird i would go from a gorgous game at a high frame rate to ugly and slow for no appearent reason.

I updated my graphics drivers and sound drivers to be on the safe side but same issue. Like you my new mother board had no on board graphics so I was at a loss.

I went into the bios and started looking around, i found that my AGP memory was set 64mb but my graphics card has 128MB. i switched the AGP to 128mb in the bios and the problem is gone. Don't know why it was happening in the first place but think it was a conflict between my videi driver(saying I had 128mb) and the bios (saying I had 64mb)

Just a suggestion but since you have a new motherboard you might want to check the AGP settings and make sure the memory setting matches what is on your video card.


cheers

most games are built with geforce video cards in mind especially ea games try changing video cards 5200 will run it fine and see if that solves your problem

Sorry most game companies (I have worked for a few in the past) make games with Microsoft Directx in mind or OpenGL

Nvidia cards have stronger OpenGL support and work better with games that have DirectX and OpenGL optimization (Doom3, Unreal, etc)
ATI cards are hard core into Directx and work better with those games (Half Life2, the Sims 2) but downgrading a video card (Ati 9600 is much better than an nvidia 5200) is not the answer.

Although getting "A" new video card (whatever brand floats your boat and doesn't sink your wallet) may be the right way to go.

BTW I have an nVidia 5900 in one machine and an nVidia 7800 in my other and the 5900 has had issues with TS2 (see my above post) I haven't installed it on my new computer yet.

Cheers

OMG I did this and it turns out I only had it set at 128. My card is 256. The game worked really well for about 4 hours, and then as I was trying to save, :smash: blam, the game crashed again. :weep: I guess me fixing the AGP allotment just prolonged my ability to play without a crash, but it didn't fix it. Now I don't know what to do.

you could also check your power input, my PC is a shuttle and it uses a very small powersupply, at first my pc was crashing every now and a gain, i checked the bios and it was not set to 240 volts, i changed it and this made all my fans run faster, and with that colled my pc down so i could over clock my graphics card.

Cooling can also be a broblem, do you have any temperature sensers in your pc, as the core of you processor should be running at bout 40 to 60 degrees, no cooler, if it is cooler, then you have a problem. dont worry about it being too hot, mine usually gets to about 70 degrees, he he

I build my pcs (i have 2) from parts that I find that people say are busted but I've never encountered a problem like yours have you tried moving your grapics card to a diffrent slot because I had to do that with one of my older comps.

bomb, chances are, he only has one AGP slot

maybe if you had that prob then have you checked other things including jumper setings etc on the mummy board? :sniper:

*is a she* I might have two, but I don't think so. I'll check the power input as well. Thanks!

What kind of AUDIO card does your older computer have? I had an Nvidia and it kept crashing my game, so I put in a Sound Blaster and all is ok again.

Now, did you MIX the sizes of your Memory? Meaning did you stick in a 528 with 256 chips? For some reason, Sims 2 doesn't like mixed sizes of RAM, at least on my computer!

How much memory are you running? Your new processor and board will take up more memory than your p2 did, so if you did not install more memory, that could do it too.