Game freeze - ATi Mobility Radeon 7000 IGP I have a new laptop (Win XP SP2) and The Sims 2 has an intermittent problem when playing the game freezes meaning I have to turn the laptop off and turn it back on again. Windows loads up and all is fine until the next time I play. However, sometimes, I can receive an error message which says ati2dvag.dll has failed. The game will exit and return to Windows but running at minimal resolution with low colours. A reboot resolves the graphics. Either can happen at any point in the game. The laptop is a new Toshiba Equium A60-181 model: 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 processor (HT) with 512mb system RAM and the ATi Mobility Radeon 7000 with 64mb video RAM. There is no newer update for the ATi card according to Toshibas website; the one there is the same version number. This is what I have tried: - I used an ATi removal utility to remove the driver and re-install the same version from the Web. No difference. - Tried compatible Omega Drivers, but this resulted in a memory dump and no access to Windows I removed them and went back to 6.14 of the ATi driver. - There are not too many selfish applications running in the background when playing. - Run the game in windowed mode, with no sound (by adding switches to the shortcut). The game didnt freeze when doing this, but did display the ati2dvag.dll error resulting in an exit. - Successfully installed a BIOS update from 1.7 to 1.8c (as downloaded from Toshiba website). I am a reasonably competent user and have resolved driver/software issues before but I am running out of ideas. Can anybody suggest anything fresh? I am brave enough to attempt anything with instructions!! I hope the post is clear, if not ask and I will clarify. Any advice is welcomed as I am now desperate to get my new laptop to play my favourite game. Many thanks!
Could you post the error messages generated directly from Windows? I'm afraid a lot of the details you've given doesn't point me in any particular direction.
It might just be overheating. TS2 puts a heavy demand on system display devices and windows would tend to report failure of the driver before reporting failure of the device, wouldn't it?
I'm afraid I haven't written the whole error message down - the bit I remember is "ati2dvag.dll has failed/stopped responding" as Windows takes itself to the lowest resolution. I have found a hardware forum which has identified the same problem - http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/31775/ However, removing the ATi driver (with ATI's removal utility) and re-installing ATi's driver seems to have stopped this error message from occuring, or made it less frequent that I haven't seen it yet. The game freezing problem does still persist as randomly as ever (I've managed to play for an hour and a half, or just 20 seconds before freezing). I have had this reply from EA support: I understand the minimum spec, but I am confused by the system requirements page which says.... If your video card does not support T&L, a 2 GHz CPU is required My laptop has a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 processor (HT) with 512mb system RAM and of course the ATi Mobility Radeon 7000 with 64mb video RAM. Does this make sense that it does meet the minimum requirements? Thanks for your replies.
OK. I take your point. Please now think about the advice you have had so far. Minimum requirements are not an absolute. They cannot possibly be because the number of different components available means there is no way to test every possible permutation of PC configuration. Minumum requirements are intended only as a guide as to what ought to work. As to your specific problem. You are running the game on a notebook computer. Those are notorious for problems associated with overheating. All computers need cooling to maintain best performance and (by way of example) many small offices in Europe have recently installed air conditioning, for the first time, not for the comfort of the workers but to reduce the degradation in computer performance in warm weather. A laptop computer has little space to ventilate, next to no forced ventilation and many users operate them on surfaces that interfere with what ventilation there is (eg: on a bed, or a lap or a rug!) A graphics adapter processor that is overheating will cease to operate ... this will either freeze the display or else cause it to break up. I am guessing but as a notebook specific display card yours will be programmed to shut down when it gets too hot ... because burning out such a part is not just expensive it could probably cause a fire. This would cause the display to appear to freeze and might cause windows to diagnose a failure of either the device or the driver. Solutions. Upgrade the display card (expensive!) Reduce the in-game graphical settings to lower levels. Play the game on smaller lots, with smaller houses, with less furniture (objects) and smaller family sizes (say 4 max) - these limits will significantly reduce demands on the display device. Operate the laptop on a cool hard surface in a cool, well ventilated room. Consider investing in a laptop cooling pad http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/cooling_devices/laptop_coolers/kingwin_ultra_cool/ So please stop worrying about what "should be" and concentrate instead on what "can be" ... OK?
Like I said ... expensive. No such thing as impossible ... just expensive. (eg remove everything from inside and replace with better stuff ... )
Some computer components won't work no matter what. One of the bad things about laptops is that their video cards (in order to cut down on the heat problem that Mirelly mentioned) are often stripped down cards. For example, a Radeon 7000 for a desktop is about the minimum of what the game can do in terms of what even having 64 mb card can do. But a mobility 7000 is even lower in ability, more on the order of the TNT2s desktop cards that don't work either. (They originally were expecting them to work, but they didn't have enough oomph, even when 64mb or more.) It is possible to force a system to install and work a little, but the playability is *way* down when you do that. Frankly, Maxis didn't even include the laptop computers in their testing. So, it's no surprise that you got the answer you did from them. None of the laptop video cards are "Supported" and any nonsupported card will often get the message that you got. Laptops (except for the ones which are *much* more expensive such as the alienware laptops) are not meant for game playing. They are meant for business and education use. Those programs require far less than a game does in terms of graphics ability. The graphics ability of laptops only has to be able to cope with being able to display things from the internet, not the high demands of the game graphics.
Thanks all for the detail in the posts - the one good thing to come from this is an increased understanding of graphics cards! What made me follow up this so much was that I played The Sims 2 (my version) on a friend's machine (HP laptop) for a couple of weeks before getting mine. I guess that was forunate to be able to cope with playing the game. (NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5600 if you're interested!)
Yep, very different graphics card. Although I suspect it didn't handle it as well as a desktop would have. But the Go5600 is one of the better video cards for a laptop. Still not great for graphics programs or high endgames, but adequate at least to be playable. When I first started playing TS1 I was using my "top end" Toshiba Satellite laptop. It had a wopping 12gb hard drive and a *really fast* P3 processor. The IT people at the hospital where I worked were amazed that a laptop could be that great. It was better than most of the desktop computers the hospital had, and the harddrive was the same size as the *servers* they had. They were really impressed with this marvelous laptop. But when I installed TS1 on it, it worked, but as I added more EPs it started not looking quite as pretty (until I got Superstar, which seemed to improve the running of the whole thing.) I had to save every 30 minutes or it would crash, and do a defrag after I finished playing or it would crash even with saving every 30 minutes. Then I put it on my desktop computer (because I wanted to see at what stage you could enter a house without a family in it) and found that it was a world of difference between what my poor Toshiba could do and what a desktop could do for about 1/6 of the price. I hadn't realized how much more detail I could see on the desktop and how much better it ran in general. But the point is, a laptop just isn't going to be able to do nearly as well as a desktop even if they have similar specs. Sad but true.
