More Awesome Than You!

For the last five days, all hell breaks loose when I go to the neighborhood screen.  At least a third my lots are flashing red blocks and the camara moves 30 seconds slower.  Sometimes when the lot are flashing, the game controls are a block white mess.

1)What is causing this?
2)How can I fix this?
3)Should I just zap the neighborhood in question?

Is it a custom neighbourhood? Did you install a patch? I had this problem after installing Seasons and then patching Pets. I had to uninstall/reinstall Seasons and get rid of the patch to get rid of it. When I later got the same patch with a stuff pack, it was ok, no such problems. Made me very weary of patches, I never hurry to install them without checking if anyone gets any problems. I know others reported the same problems back then.

The hood in questio uses a maxis supplied template.  I don't have any maxis or comunity patches.

When's the last time you updated the drivers for your video card?
I had some strange problems like that before, and that's what my problem was.
Worth a try, since it doesn't cost anything. :)

I updated my drivers not around a month ago.  Whenever my video card needs new drivers, I get the slowest game ever.  Will deleteing cgen help at all? (I delete groups and accessories after I play or open bodyshop)

The problem could be that the game is not compatible with the new driver. You may have to roll back to an earlier version of the driver.

If I go back to an older driver, the game may not load.  My game wash freazing and crashing before the update.

When my brother reinstalled XP he made the video card my computer's primary video source.  Could this factor in to my problems?

BTW, my card is a RADEON 9200 SERIES [Display adapter] RADEON 9200 SERIES - Secondary [Display adapter]

If your card is an nVidia you may need an older driver as there are conflicts between the coding of the driver and the coding of the game. I had similar problems with my old system, going back to the 77.77 driver fixed my problems. 

I have a Radeon 9250 and I had a similar problem when setting up my hood once before. The problem turned out to be that I'd placed far too many lots and the thing was just choking whilst trying to render and display all the houses. I ended up bulldozing a bunch of lots I decided not to use and it was fine again. Might want to try that before nuking the hood.

jfade, it worked after knocking down my unpreped/useless lots.(and a reboot) 

Cool, glad to hear it. :)