Neighbourhoods Not Loading I've recently installed the University EP and now none of my neighbourhoods will load. They did load before I added the EP. If I create a new neighbourhood in the EP, it will load up the empty one, but then as soon as I go to add a school, it freezes up on that loading screen instead. The bottom of the neighbourhood loading screen also goes all discoloured. I can attach a screen cap of that if need be. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling. I've updated my video card drivers and rolled them back and forth, and made sure XP is completely up to date. I've rebooted more times. Nothing seems to help in getting it past this loading screen. Admittedly, my system is rather old and low in RAM, but I really can't afford to upgrade it right now. Is there any way to make this work with my current specs? Dell Dimenion 8200 Windows XP SP2 Pentium 4 1.80 GHz 256 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Your system is being overwhelmed. You didn't mention if you had downloads or not. If you do have a lot of downloads, remove that folder from your Sims2 folder (from My Documents) and see if it makes a difference. If it does, then you'll want to pare down your downloads to the ones you can't live without. That way you can still play the game until you have the funds to upgrade both your old video card and your RAM. (Your processor is also rather low for being able to play well.) Also, check to make sure that your options are listed at the minimum for all of them. That may also give you some more "oomph" until you can upgrade or replace your system. In the long run it might be more cost effective to get a new system entirely. I've seen computers which are far better for the game and more upgradable for the future at around $500, and it might cost more than than if you had to upgrade. If you are even sort of considering an upgrade, it would pay you to do a lot of shopping before you either upgrade or replace. (Last fall I was able to build for a little over $1000 not counting software what would have cost me over $3000 if I were to get a prebuilt computer. And since then I've added a second gb of RAM for half of what the first one cost me last year, and that's with them being the same mb and mhz, in the same brand.) Either way, start saving for now. The games (and I'm not even talking about the EPs which won't increase it nearly as much as other new basegames) will only go up in needed specs from here.
Oh, sweetie, you and I have close to the same computer. We just recently got ours paid off, and we've already had to upgrade the graphics card, ethernet card, and the RAM. And we still need a ton more RAM. Before we got the new graphics card, My game would only allow 2 visitors on a lot, and would not show any of the cinematics. I didn't even know there WAS any cinematics until someone on here started talking about them. LOL It cost Hubby around $100 to install a nVidia GeForce 5500, which made a huge diffrence in my game play. His brother builds his own systems, so Hubby just called him and the two of them installed the Graphics Card together. If you know someone who works on computers, that might be a cheap way to get your game up and running. RAM is going to be a little more tricky, we found out. Dell Memory Chips are more expensive than other brands. To double our memory, it's going to cost about $200.
No, none for Sims 2 yet. Even before the EP, I knew I was kind of pushing the system, so I haven't wanted to add the poor beast's stress levels. Yeah, good thinking. I'll double-check this next time I start it up. I just thought there might be something specific since it's an outright freezing up when it starts loading the neighbourhood. Before I installed the EP, the game ran. It got a little laggy if I tried to have more than 5-6 people on a lot, and visiting community lots was pretty much out, but so long as I stuck to smallish families and kept them at home, it would at least run. Yeah, I know, I know. I really need to get this thing up to spec. But I only really use it for playing games these days as I use a PowerBook for my main computer, and I don't really play many games other than the Sims. Makes it harder to justify the cost. Yeah. I suppose I could probably swing a new video card, if I really pinch pennies, but I'm worried that it's going to wind up being the RAM that's the problem, and with this #$(*ing paired memory that Dell wants for this thing, it's just ... not worth it at this point. I'm really kicking myself for not getting more installed when I first bought this thing, but I didn't realize it needed special memory and was planning on just yoinking the stick out of my old box. At this point I don't even care that much about game quality. I just want to be able to load the thing and keep it moving quickly enough to be able to play, even if it requires the patience of a saint. So if the chances that a new video card would do that for me are pretty good, I could look into that. But if a new card is going to do bubkis without more RAM, I'd rather not throw the money away right now but save up for a new gaming PC.
