Problem with High end machine I bought Sims 2 and all its expansions just yesterday. I installed them all and tried to play using the latest of the series (Bon Voyage). Firstly I noticed that the game took very long to get loaded and the splash screen was in slow motion and then the game froze in that state. Once I managed to get past the splash screen and got a freezing state after I chose neighborhood.So I decided to uninstall the expansions and try to play the core Sims 2 and I got the same problem. My pc specs are AMD Dual Core 4400+ 2 Giga Ram Creative SB Audigy 2 Ex OS: Windows XP PRO SP2 ps. I have installed the latest drivers for all my hardware Thank you in advance
Audigy cards have been associated with some problems. How about telling us your graphics card. Uninstalling expansions is not recommended (by me ) I suggest that perform a complete uninstall and then reinstall. Do uninstall manually. See the FAQs for detail on that. Patching should resolve the Audigy problem but without knowing your graphics status we're in the dark.
goto http://www.creativelabs.com and get the latest drivers for Audigy 2. I'd also suggest making a stop over at www.amd.com as well and get the latest set of drivers for AMD. (yes there are drivers for AMD CPUs)
The perform the complete uninstall/reinstall (sorry but it'll rule out corrupt files) You might also be interested in seeing this article (at MATY) which describes a problem (and a fix) for duo core CPUs. I have had that link/fix set on one side to try myself, but I ended up upgrading to Vista at the same time as I upgraded the processor and (so far) Vista and my AMD 64 X2 4800+ seem to play nicely enough together without a fix. I'd definitely point the finger of blame at Audigy. Try googling audigy sims 2 and you'll se what I mean. :(
I'm personally not too keen on blaming the Audigys Mirelly. Primarily because I own an Audigy 2 ZS and I don't have a single problem.
Ah yes but you keep your drivers up to date. I hadn't looked at this in detail before now. It does appear to be a driver issue.