More Awesome Than You!

I tried searching for answers to this problem in the forum and on Google but have yet to find any that work as of yet. If I missed something I'm sorry, please link me so I can hopefully fix this problem.
My sim game goes to a black screen at completely random points, then when I exit the program within a few minutes my computer will completely lock up making me have to restart. It also tells me to update my video driver, ATI Mobility Radeon 3870, which I have several times and it still gives me this error.
My computer specs are as follows:

Manufacturer: Alienware M17 Laptop
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T9550 @ 2.66GHz 2.67GHz
Memory (RAM): 4.00 GB
System Type: 32-bit Operating System.
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 3870
Anti Virus: Windows One Care

Do you ever get an error that says, "graphics driver 'blah' stopped responding, but has fully recovered" with this? ... If so, I get the same thing, and apparently it's a common Vista issue.

Nope don't get that error.

A black screen usually means that you've run out of video memory. How often do you save your game?

When it's acting up I save my game every five minutes roughly, when it's behaving usually once a hour.

I get that error.  How do you get it to stop?

I've never been able to. :/ .. I tried googling for help, it mostly said, 'update your drivers' but my drivers are fully updated, and I still get the issues. Some other person suggested getting a new graphics card, but I haven't tried that. Usually I don't bluescreen unless I've been running the game for a long time.. like.. over 3 hours... so.. all I can really recommend, is living with the error, and saving frequently if your computer is prone to bluescreening behavior.

I've googled too and have seen the "update your drivers" repsonse, so I did and I still get the error.  I thought (was hoping) you might have some info beyond that.  It seems like I get the error early on while playing, sometimes 10-15 minutes in.  Then there's no rhyme or reason to it; sometimes I won't get it again at all, even after playing 4-5 hours and sometimes I'll get it 3-4 more times playing within that same time frame.  Makes no sense to me.

I don't know if it helps but I can post my DxDiag report.

Use the FPS limiter that is available in the awesomeware section - see if that improves things for you. It is a graphics card issue, and the FPS limiter prevents your graphics card from going overboard on TS3 while still keeping your graphics as good as they can be for your card.

Thanks I will try that and see if it works for me.

I used to have black screen syndrome in CAS.
I updated my graphics card drivers (so well hidden too!!) and patched the game and it has stopped.
I used to have to make a new sim really quickly, select them in play, and then 'editsim' to flesh out the sim. It never happened in editsim.
It would always say nkvkdm* has stopped responding, and it is Vista

*or something like that, nvkmddv, or maybe mkvm, no. nkmv..v.. (fade out here)

I tried the FPS limiter and it still crashed on me. My game is also fully patched, and even though I update my drivers for the video card numerous times. Yet when I start the game I still get the update your video driver message.

The black screen freezing happened to me, usually in CAS with my Radeon HD 4850. After trying every possible solution and nothing helping, I gave up, took out my video card and put in my old Radeon x1900 and it hasn't happened since. Now I'm out $200 because I bought it in February, before the delay was announced, so by the time TS3 did come out and I figured out it didn't work, I was past the time that I could have returned it. It wasn't because of drivers or over-heating, so I still have no idea what caused it. XFX, when I contacted them, said that it's probably a glitch on EA's side, especially since I was able to play several of the newer PC games without any issues. Either way, I give up because it's too much bother to uninstall the old drivers, switch the cards out, install the new drivers, try the new possible solution, only to have it fail again and have to repeat the swap again just to play TS3. I'd rather just put up with slightly crappy graphics.

Over on the EA Sims 3 site in Technical they have a hotfix for ATI cards. I didn't really look at the post as I run Nvidia, but it supposed to fix a problem pertaining to ATI and the Sims 3 specifically. Just thought I'd mention it if any of you were interested.

I checked it out, and it just says it fixes "graphical corruption" which doesn't sound like my issue. With such a slim chance of it working, I doubt it would be worth the time it would take to switch the cards again.

I got the video card with my computer which I had custom made on the alien ware site so I really don't have another video card to switch it out with. I tried the hotfix a while back before posting on here, and it doesn't solve the problem