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would someone be willing to take a look at my error report to see what the heck it all means...cause frankly I have no clue what the heck it all means.....Thanks....Tgdry6

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Sound errors are normal, and generally not something to be concerned about.  Next time, could you please post error logs in a text attachment?

Sorry I wasn't sure exactly how to go about doing that ....these errors are the only thing showing up after my game reboots itself...so I was hoping there might be something in there that may tell me what's going on.....Thanks.....Tgdry6

Have you checked your video drivers to see if they are adequate or need updating?

And you can in future post error logs whee it says additional options at the bottom of the text window when you type your post - just click on it and click browse, which will take you to your pc files and you just go through until you reach EAGames/TheSims2/Logs/

Sound errors like you posted above are normal, and have been in TS2 since the start. They're harmless, and probably are only visible because TS2 was rushed and little tweaks like cleaning these out were not done by EAMaxis.

Well, maybe in the next patch?.........

Thanks and yes they are up to date....I think that is one of the problems.....my game doesn't like that version of driver and I wasn't able to roll back to a prior one cause it's  a newly built pc and for some reason it would not let me install an older driver version (my brother even tried and he's pretty handy with computers).....I've tried to play several times today and gotten rebooted every time....some times it lets me play longer....mainly if I'm just building and redecorating....but boy it really hates went I try to "run a business" and it's not particular which one.....home or community....toy,flower, electronics.....I'll getting going good and then every thing freezes and it reboots itself....I delete group cache (?) file
either before I start the game or after I've been booted off.....it's very annoying to have gone throught the expense of a new pc and this damn game still can't be played!  At least since I've had ofb installed.....maybe the new patch will help....not holding my breath on that though ......again thanks for the help.....Tgdry6

Unlikely. When I first pointed this out to a Maxoid they were surprised… more evidence most Maxoids don't actually play their game. Apparently *all* debugging messages like this should have been hidden from the console, but in fact never were.

As a rule EA (and hence Maxis) doesn't fix old releases any longer, instead fixes are rolled out with new releases only. The core TS2 game remains buggy, and only by selectively disabling core features (such as objects.package) are bugs avoided in later expansions.

To fix the sound errors the sound system would have to be (partially) overhauled, which I doubt EAMaxis will do. They've yet to fix the karaoke and bowling alley sound bugs that date back to Nightlife, for example… let alone the plethoria of fixes by the FFS crew and others which in many cases date back to TS2.

Well I was hoping that it would reveal a mighty mystery that would solve my rebooting issues..... :-\.....and I guess I was grabbing at straws.....I just want to be able to play my game with out it rebooting everytime I try to do anything.... well not everything , I can build and redecorate stuff but I would like to run it in live mode every once in awhile .....Tgdry6

Oh please don't dash my last hope...... :'(......Okay well may the "new expansion pack" will help with my problem....... :-\.......no.....I don't think so either.....but I gotta have faith.....Tgdry6

I have to say, I would rather pay £10 more per  EP, wait three months longer, and get a product that didn't have to be constantly modified in order to get it to work properly!  It wasn't like this in the old Sims1 days!

So I get the reboot again and finally send in the error report and this is what it showed:

 Error report summary

    Error type    Windows stop error (A message appears on a blue screen with error code information)
    Solution available?    Yes
    What does this error mean?    You received this message because a device driver installed on your computer caused the Windows operating system to stop unexpectedly. This type of error is referred to as a "stop error." A stop error requires you to restart your computer.
    Cause    A video adapter device driver
    Computer symptoms    A message appears on a blue screen with error code information:

    STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER
    - or -
    STOP: 0x100000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER_M

Action for you to take

We have analyzed your error report and there are two solutions for this problem for you to choose between.
+ Solution 1: Install the most current driver for your video card


Been there done that.....but what about this?

+ Solution 2: Manually decrease Hardware Acceleration for your video adapter

   

       1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Display.
       2. Click the Settings tab, and then click Advanced.
       3. Click the Troubleshoot tab, move the Hardware Acceleration slider to None, and then clear the Enable Write Combining check box.
       4. Click OK, and then click OK.
          Note: This procedure prevents the display driver from programming the hardware incorrectly, but you may lose some display functionality and performance. Although you can increase the hardware acceleration settings higher than None to regain functionality and performance, these settings increase the chance that the issue will occur again. For maximum stability, leave hardware acceleration off.

What exactly will this do ?  What type of loss of display functionally or performace are they refering to? In other words what can I expect to happen to my game play if I change these settings as recomended above? Thanks for any help it's always most welcome, Tgdry6.

Hrm. Sounds odd. Have you tried uninstalling the video drivers completely and then re-installing them with whatever CD/disk that originally came with your video card? I would try this since it seems like your problems happened after updating to a newer driver and you are having problems rolling back.

Ste

The drivers I have are a "fresh" install....I don't have any older drivers to roll back to so I had to go to the site and look for one that was archived (sp?) .....that's the one it wouldn't  let me roll back to....I forgot  the message it kept giving me....my brother  took a wack at it also and he's pretty computer savvy and he couldn't  get it to accept the older driver either.....I was trying to get the 77.77 version , cause the 84.21 really doesn't play nicely with the sims2.   This is a new pc a friend of my daughter's built for me....it was suppose to be awesome.....not to the sims anyway....lol.....tgdry6

As far as I understand it, that setting tunes down any settings in the graphics card that make things faster, like multiple pipelines.  The only time I've seen turning down hardware acceleration help anything is with the cheap-ass computers they provide at work, which are built by some no-name company, where if the setting is at maximum, MS Word doesn't show any graphics at all.  The problem is that whoever built the things put in video cards that are mismatched with the motherboard bus, and can suck in data faster than the bus can provide it.

So in your case it may cause a bit of lag in the game, and you may have to compensate by turning down some of the graphic settings, starting with shadows and reflections. You may also have to lower the view distances so the card doesn't have to work as hard drawing all that background stuff.

You haven't mentioned what type of computer you have, and what type of video card.  That info would also help us help you. :)

You haven't mentioned what type of computer you have, and what type of video card.  That info would also help us help you.

AMD Athlon(tm) 64x2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
2.01 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM
GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB PCI Express x 16
Window XP (SP2) Home Edition 2000

This computer was home built by a friend of my daughter's.....he recommended the parts....I ordered them and he put it together for me.....I'm thinking of increasing the RAM to 2.00 GB.....maybe that might help. 

So in your case it may cause a bit of lag in the game, and you may have to compensate by turning down some of the graphic settings, starting with shadows and reflections. You may also have to lower the view distances so the card doesn't have to work as hard drawing all that background stuff

Well that pretty much sucks.....I had better options running it on my old computer with my GeForce 5700 which blew up....Tgdry6

How much available RAM do you have after the game has been running for a couple of hours?  Also, how big is your Paging file.  With 1GB of RAM you can increase that with no probs to 2048 (exactly) maximum, even though windows says 1.5GB.  You can free up RAM by getting rid of non essential start-up programs too.

[/i][/b]

Unfortunately it rarely lets me run it for that long....continously that is without it rebooting unless I'm just building stuff or redecorating....would that count?  If so how do I check this available RAM? Don't know anything about the Paging File.....I read a thread on it but unfortunately could make heads or tails out of what the heck it was referring to.....I'm hesistant to mess with stuff that although seems uncomplicated to some.....ALWAYS for me turns out to be more that what it seems..... :-\....I've mess up my compute once already trying to do what was suppose to be simple and had to have someone come and fix my screw-up..... :-[.....learned my lesson......Oh and thanks for the suggestions.....keeping my fingers crossed that I can find a solution......Tgdrysix

To find out how much available RAM you have at any time, go to the desktop leaving your game idling, then press control/alt/deleteand Windows Task Manager will appear.  Click on Performance, and you will see 2 graphs.  The top one shows you how hard your processor is working, the second shows houw much RAM you are using, and by subtraction from 1024 (1GB) you can find how much you have available.  If it is less than 50 - 100 MB then your game will be extremely slow and choppy and if your paging file is small and you frequently get messages saying the windows is increasing the paging file, then you have nothing to fall back on and this could lead to your game crashing.  The trouble is, that although Windows increases the size of your paging file, it's not permanent, and next time you play the problem will reoccur.  There is an excellent article at SimWardrobe (Paladin's Place) which is very easy to understand, which explains how to cut out some of the many programs that insist on running at start-up, and really don't need to.  The article also tells you how to make a non-dynamic paging file, which, although it made a tremendous difference to my PC when I did it, it may not be the best thing for you if you have problems with technical stuff.  However, it does show you how to get to the option to change your paging file and once you have read through the article you will probably understand a little of how it works, then you can simply increase the upper limit to 2048 and see if that helps.

Thanks will "dash" over there and see what I can see.....Tgdrysix

Hope it helps - at least most of the explanations are accompanied by a pic of what you should see on your screen.

Well I followed the directions.....except for the last part....I left that alone for now.....changed my paging file to 2048 (static) as recommended.....and I guess I'll  give that a try for now.....I'm planning on in the near future to increase from 1GB to 2 GB and maybe that will help....and  any pics along with directions are always nice..... :).....made it alot more clearer for me....Tgdrysix

Yes, I thought it was one of the clearest sets of directions I'd seen.  Hope it helps.  And the Ad-Aware program, I've found is pretty good, always seems to find stuff that's managed to sneak past McAfee!

Well sad to say none of it helped....I was ALLOWED to play about  20 minutes this round before I got kicked out....I guess I'm going to have to give the driver rollback another wack cause I just refuse to play without the full benifits of my graphics card (Manually decrease Hardware Acceleration)....that is just ridiculous to have a high end card and not be able to use it's features....man I'm so aggravated with this crap.... >:(.....Tgdrysix

Out of curiousity, do you have the "useshaders" cheat in a startup file? I have a Geforce 5200 graphics card and when I used that cheat, it caused my computer to reboot; once I took it out, it was fine.

Well, one thing I do know is you're not the first person to post on this board about problems with that card.  Mine's only a GEForce 5200, and I've been lucky, after I had to upgrade because I crashed and the Windows error reporting thingy directed me to NVidia to the driver I needed, it's been fine, the only thing missing is the fish!  I can't unfortunately remember who it was who had the problem, or whether they found a solution, but maybe someone else will have a better memory than me.  

Are the drivers you are currently using the ones that came with the card, or did you upgrade to them later?  If so, maybe uninstalling the whole thing, and then reinstalling from the CD would solve things?

Also, it might just be worth checking that you have the latest version of DirectX, and also running DXdiag from the Run option in the Start menu (always providing your PC will let you!)

Unless it was something that is added "automatically" to the startup file .... I've never added it myself....don't even know how....sad I know.....but there it is.....how would I check that?  I 've seen treads about missing fish that refer to useshaders....but I've never intentionally messed with that.....Tgdrysix

Well, for starters, do you actually have a startup cheat file? 

Here's a thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4332.0) that explains it, just so ZZ doesn't have to type it all out or something lol.

It was probably me.... ::) :-\ :(.....and yes I think  it's the driver that came with the video card cause it's relatively new.....and it doesn't show any other driver versions that I can roll back to....I think....but I maybe going out on a limb here.....that if you have had older driver versions they will showup somewhere when you click the rollback driver option?.....then again I am by far the least likely person to know if this is accurate or not.....I know that went I tried that it gave me some message to that effect.....(there wasn't any older drivers to rollback too)....And yes I have the last Direct X version..... running DXdiag from the Run option in the Start menu.....what will this accomplish? I'm willing to pretty much give anything a try at this point.....Tgdrysix

Uhhhhh....is this a trick question?   I would have to say no?  At least I never "set one up" that I know of.....Tgdrysix

Thanks I'll head over there and see what damage I can get into some more....lol....Tgdrysix

Well, it checks the performance of your video card, and just might be useful in at least so far as if your card fails any of the tests, it would pinpoint where exactly the failure is happening.

Okay will give this a shot....see what happens....and after viewing the startup cheat file thread I know for a fact I did not set one up, it seems bit too complicated for me to attempt.... :-\....is that the only way "useshaders" can be enabled? Thanks for not getting annoyed with me and my issues, you've been very helpful and patient.....Tgdrysix

Update:  Ran the DXdiag....couldn't find a problem with anything....sooooo.....that leaves me back to square one..... :-\....Tgdrysix

Everybody has problems with this game at some point!  The only reason I know some of the answers is because I had to ask questions and someone else told me what to do!

Well you've been most helpful....I'd press the "thanks" button but I know it's just for show....lol....Tgdrysix

Like the News Box!

While useful in their place, stuff like running spyware killers isn't relevant to your problem.  ;D

There are several things to consider:

1)  Video drivers. This site is full of complaints about how the game won't run properly with 80.xx nVidia drivers. Several folks have reported success with the 77.xx drivers. If this is a home-built machine, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to uninstall the current drivers and install 77.xx drivers. Be aware, however, that the nVidia uninstall routine is reported to to leave a lot of stuff behind, so you will probably need to use a utility like Driver Cleaner (www.drivercleaner.net) to get it all out. After removing the current drivers, reboot and cancel the new hardware wizard so that you're running the generic VGA driver that comes with Windows, then install the 77.xx drivers by running the EXE. Note that you probably need to have administrator privileges on the PC in order to remove the current drivers. It may be that the person who built the PC created a separate user account for you, that doesn't have primary Administrator status.

2)  The person who built the machine botched the installation and you need to reinstall Windows from scratch.

3)  There may be a defective or damaged component in the PC, such as the graphics board or the motherboard itself. Or the power supply could be inadequate (even if it is nominally rated for 400 or 500W). These things can be difficult to diagnose without access to spare parts to swap in and out to see where the problem lies.

4)  With 1 GB of RAM, a 2-GB paging file is way too big. Try 100 MB initial and 800 MB max.  :)  For more info, look here. (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=4293.msg123703#msg123703)

FWIW, I have been building my own machines for more than ten years, and I would never buy an nVidia-based graphics board.   8)

Only if the older drivers were installed and not uninstalled.  But in the context of this discussion, I think when folks say to 'rollback your drivers', they're not referring to the rollback thing in Windows.  What they're saying is to go to the card vendor's site and download the older drivers (usually found in an archive there somewhere), uninstall the current drivers, and install the older ones.

Some nvidea cards will only work properly with TS2 if you install the drivers from last September (the 78.01 version). I had this problem myself when I temporarily put a GeForce 6600 in my PC while my ATI card was out for repair, and I got the blue screens and reboots until I uninstalled all the nvidea drivers and installed that version.  After that, things were fine.

Yesterday I downloaded the new 9 series driver (9.3.1.1) released on the first of this month (still in Beta) and although I did have one blue screen yesterday(after several hours play), I haven't had one today.  This driver is twice the size of my previous 8-series one as it apparently has various extra bits & pieces, but I haven't found them yet.  Having tried it out for 24 hours, I must say that I can see noticeable improvements.  The first thing I noticed on entering the neighbourhood was how much bluer the water was and when I started playing, the speed was greatly increased.  Also, whereas before it would take ages to scroll through the various hairstyles and so on when changing appearance (esp. custom ones), now they appear instantly (and I mean instantly).  Well worth giving this one a try, especially if like me your pc will let you upgrade a driver but not downgrade it.

Found this on a Podium Thread " Best Nvidia Driver for OFB" .....thinking of giving this a shot.....can't play with the driver version I have now.....should I or shouldn't I that is the question....Tgdrysix

I'm so glad you seem to have found a solution to your problem.  Hope it keeps working well for you!

Well, while you're over on the nvidia site downloading these, grab a copy of the 78.01 version too. :)  That way, if these don't solve your problem, you'll have the others on hand to try.

Just a quick update.....nothing has worked so far.....still getting the rebooting....I've installed the patch unforntuately that didn't help either.....got a eagames tech support question going....first suggestion ....Anyone want to take a wild guess?!?.....To disable custom content......next suggestion.....stop unneccessary backgroung tasks from running.....anyone of you guys do this?  I've never have and on my old system it was never an issue and I was running a gefore 5700 .....so I'm still at the drawing board with no solutions in sight....except maybe downgrading my graphic card, isn't that a hoot!!!......Tgdry6

Pity you can't just have two graphics cards, and swap them around as necessary!

Well actually I can....I can run 2 cards on this machine.....it would have to be the same card though....so I don't think that would help my problem .... :P :-\ :(.....Tgdry6

Shame, I don't think it would, either!  If one won't work, I can't see how the other one would!  Maybe you need to look at a different manufacturer - you'd no doubt be able to get at least some of what the NVidia cost you back.