Troubleshooting The Sims 2 won't run

The Sims 2 won't run

I recently reinstalled The Sims 2 after having had to reformat my hard disk due to a hardware upgrade. I have both expansion packs and I installed them, along with the core game, with no difficulty. However, when I tried to run the game, I was shown the splash screen, then it disappeared and nothing else happened. When I tried to run again, the same thing happened, but this time I got one of the "The Sims 2 has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." errors.

Since seeing that error message, I have done a complete manual uninstall of all game files as per instructions in this support page, then re-installed only the core game. The procedure made absolutely no difference - I still get the same error message.

Here are my PC specs (I'm following the guidelines in the Help us to help you thread

1) AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.1 GHz (OCed))
2) 1GB DDR RAM
3) 41.3 GB free space on hard drive in use
4) 186 GB total formatted space on hard drive in use
5) NVidia GeForce 6600GT
6) NVidia ForceWare 81.95 graphics driver
7) DirectX 9.0c (I'm attaching my dxdiag log file if it helps)
8) Windows XP Home Edition SP2
9) Sims 2 CD version

The only cause for this problem I could see would be the X2 processor - I know that some games aren't properly compatible, but I just hope Sims 2 isn't one of them. I've looked online for a patch relating to this, but can't find one (and I've already installed the AMD X2 hotfix + registry mod). Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

 

Yup. For both the game and Windows XP.

I've also tried running in windowed mode and without sound since posting. Neither method worked

 

You could try rolling back that NVIDIA driver. 81.95 is the latest release and I remember that its immediate predecessor -- I can't recall the exact version designation -- caused me some problems with a 5600 (I also read about a lot of problems). I rolled back to the last stable version: 71.98*.

Get it at:-
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_71.89.html (if you're unable to roll back drivers.) It'll do no harm to try anyway.


*[edit]Yuh I meant 71.89 I plead dipsomanic immunity ... hic

 

Here you go:
Faulting application sims2.exe, version 1.0.0.1022, faulting module ~df394b.tmp, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x0008e86b.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I've followed the link but it offers nothing helpful. I'm going to google "df394b.tmp" errors and see what I can find.

I'll give this a go as well. Thanks for all the advice