Graphics frozen but game still plays.

[Budcot]

Ok, my game will not load in windows mode, it has blotchy black and white squares and never loads no matter how long it's left for. Sometimes it works if I load it in full screen mode and then load it in windows mode.

After playing a while in windows mode, the graphics freeze as though it's paused but you can still hear the game playing. You can click the buttons into build and buy mode and save the game but the dialogue boxes don't show, you need to click where they are from memory. When buy/build is clicked, the music is audible and if you click where you know there are objects then it sounds like they're selected but nothing visible happens. Even when I've clicked from the household to go into neighbourhood view, it hasn't spurred the graphics to change.

I've tried removing CC, driver roll backs and rebooting the computer. I've also tried altering the resolution but that doesn't seem to work either. I hadn't played for a while, I'd been playing black and white 2 and civ 4 but I don't think those could have caused the problem.

[Ichigo]

Graphics card, get u 1. Or take my route and suck it up and just play in fullscreen. Also, "Oops! You Broke It!" is the tech support forum.

[Budcot]

Yes, I suddenly noticed that spelling error, fixed now. The problem is, it still freezes in full screen, the full screen has to be used just to get it to load. It freezes no matter which way I play after a while.

[Mootilda]

If your graphics card is underpowered and you continue to play, you may actually be doing damage to your card.  Over time, your card will stop being able to do anything at all.

[Budcot]

It's an ATI Radeon HD 4870 series one, I don't think it's the card that's the problem. The reason I'm asking here is that my boyfriend is a software developer/general computer geek and he's got no idea what the problem is and has already tried several things over the last week to fix it which haven't helped.

[jezzer]

Then he's obviously failed you.  I'd deny him sex until he fixes it.  Or find a smarter boyfriend.