Windowed Mode: Navigation via right-click causes graphics driver reset/crash

[schaschlik]

Alright, I'm finally desperate enough to ask for help.
I've searched for the following here on MATY, MTS2 and Google in general: right-click, right click, M&G, K&B, IKEA, graphics, driver, crash, freeze, Nvidia, ATI, Radeon. Apparently I'm alone with my problem.

It wasn't until April that I installed the IKEA, K&B and M&G SPs -all in one session- to complete game. When I did this, I made sure to follow the installation advice given here, so a faulty installation should hopefully not be the problem.

My system specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+, 4 GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, OS: still WinXP
The driver is freshly updated for TS3.

The problem:
Since I prefer to play in windowed mode, I'm used to moving the camera by right-clicking on a spot or holding the right mousebutton down while dragging the cursor across a lot, and that never caused any trouble when I had all EPs and SPs minus the ones above.
Now it's completely different: About 3 out of 10 right-clicks result in freezing or game crashes, and sometimes, but only if I'm lucky, VPU Recover will reset my driver.

What I've tried so far:
-changing the in-game settings to every possible configuration: shadows, details, smooth edges
-changing the Radeon CP settings to every possible configuration
-eliminating the usual suspects, i. e. cutting/pasting the mydocuments\EA Games\The Sims 2 folder to my desktop and letting the game generate a new one (I'm not sure if this was really necessary, but I did it just in case.)
The game installation itself is untouched (no lighting mods and the like), except for cleaned 'hood templates.
-reinstallation of the graphics driver
-starting the game with the onboard graphics (Nvidia 7050M-M) and the newest driver, same drill as above
The Nvidia CP has no driver reset function, so the game simply froze, then crashed.
Fun fact: For sheer fun I briefly replaced my shiny Radeon card with my old Geforce 5200 FX and was utterly amazed that despite the shitty graphics and jagged edges, I could right-click to my heart's contents without any trouble at all. WTF?

Right now, I am at the end of my (limited) wisdom. The only thing I've avoided so far is a complete reinstallation of the game and all EPs/SPs, and I really hope that it's not necessary.
I'd be really glad if some awesome person was able to point me the way to a solution.

[J. M. Pescado]

Have the same graphics card, could not reproduce. Check drivers. If they are not the latest, try them. If they are, try downgrading them. If you're getting lots of VPU-recover issues that only appear after the game has been running a bit, never at the VERY beginning, check heat issues.

[schaschlik]

Okay, I think I found the problem:
I had a look at the GPU clocks in Catalyst Control Center, and it seems that the 3D clock won't start by default when playing a 3D application in windowed mode.
The graphics card stays in its 2D powersaving mode, which might be the reason why the game freezes or crashes after a while.
Guess it's time to go back to fullscreen gameplay.