Sorry to hear that, Allen.  I was psyched at first when you said you solved it with the power supply. Doh! Perhaps the power supply isn't really the root of the problem but just made it seem a little better.  I replaced my power supply too when I was troubleshooting and seemed to work at first, but it didn't really solve it.  Can you get a different model card in return for the one you sent back, or is it just a straight exchange?  Do you know anyone with a computer who might be able to test the card for you before you send it back? Testing with another motherboard might be the only way to find out if the card is truly faulty or if it's just a general system incompatibility.

Nice going, Pescado! I'll definitely be downloading that mod.  It doesn't look like Maxis is going to bother to fix it.  I was really impressed to see a patch out so soon, but it didn't fix most of the issues I've ran into.

And, yes, Pegasys, I've also noticed that it's always the same customers coming in day after day and most of them don't have a cent to their name. I boot them out as quick as I can when I see them enter the store, before they can turn other people off. I haven't tried renovating the business, so I don't know if that makes any difference or not. It's kind of silly if that's the case because there's only so many plants you can sell in a flower shop so you can't realy change the inventory that much without making it a different type of store.

I might be completely off here, but when I ran into these issues it seemed to me that the customers who were causing problems were the ones with no money to buy anything.  They're flat ass broke so they stand around and chit chat and annoy everyone, instead of buying things like they're supposed to. The more I play a business it seems that the customers who can't afford to  purchase anything begin to ourtweigh the townies with unlimited funds. The more I play the harder it is to actually make any profit because of this.

It was intended that playable sims visiting stores will only keep the last 3 objects purchased and automatically sell back the others so that they don't run out of money.  This is completly broken. When I enter the houses of most sims their inventory is loaded with crap and they have no money and I have to manually sell everything they've bought.

Are these two things related, or is it just my imagination?

Is the pie marked for sale by any chance?  If so, have you tried unmarking it and then deleting it?

Yeah, it's definitely possible.  It just seems a shame that you paid money for a card that's useless to you. I'd be fed up with ATI too.

It really sounds like it's a driver issue and not a hardware problem, but I understand that it's just as frustrating. Hopefully you'll find some other use for the card- maybe you can sell it or something if you're not able to get a refund.  Sorry about the bad luck.  I'm glad things are working ok with the old card, at least.

How do you know it's a physical problem with the card? Did something else happen?

Maybe you could take the computer to a shop with the ATI card in it and have them look it over.  They might be able to find the issue.  It will cost you a bit, but probably less than the price of a new card. Sorry you weren't able to solve the problem yourself. 

My issues were very similar to what you're experiencing, Allen, except I was never able to find a stable driver so I was always plagued with crashes. I guess the problem was that I play a lot of newer games which required newer drivers so I didn't go back too far with previous versions.  I didn't want to put up with crashes in 10 games just to achieve stability in one, so I eventually just gave up and bought new hardware.

I experienced crashes, black screens, freezing and reboots while browsing and whatnot, but I also had problems playing games.  I could play sometimes for hours, but other times it might crash within the first two minutes.  It was pretty random.  It seemed to be an issue with the hardware/driver interface, and if I recall correctly I got an error saying something about a communication problem and the card would stop responding. 

I did a lot of research on this and it seems to be very common.  People with different motherboard chipsets and both Nvidia and ATI cards all have similiar issues, so it makes it very hard to narrow it down. The only common denominator seems to be the AGP bus.  I found a lot of suggested work arounds, but none of them worked for me. Switching to PCIE was the only thing that saved my sanity.

I really wish I could offer more help and I hope you manage to find a compatible card. It sucks that you're stuck with having to choose between playing one game or the other.  I feel your pain. 

EB just called to let us know our games were in and we could pick them up anytime, although they told us yesterday that they wouldn't be here until tomorrow. My husband is going to play hookie from work this afternoon and go pick them up. Yay!

Ok, I just reread your post and this part makes me wonder:  " Put all I own on external hard drive did one download NOT FROM HERE corrupted the whole thing."

What exactly did you copy over to that drive? Is it possible that you copied actual programs from C:  drive and moved them to your F: drive? If so that's why they no longer function properly. If this is the case then your drive is likely ok, but you may have messed up the registry beyond repair.  What files did you move?

Oh, and I don't recommend trying System Mechanic. At least be very cautious if you do.  I used to use it until it deleted default Windows fonts. It made my computer completely unusuable because I could no longer read anything. All text was replaced by garbled symbols and I had to reformat to fix it.  The same thing happened to my father-in-law who also used it. 

Well I'm glad to hear that everything seems to be running stable for the moment and I hope it continues to do so.  If you are able to hold off for awhile you probably will be able to get something much better for a lot less.  Maybe they actually sorted out the chipset problems.  If so, yay! It's about freakin' time.

So the problem isn't fixed, Missdoh?

Is it just Bodyshop that gives you problems, or is the game still acting up as well? I know absolutely nothing about bodyshop so I don't know if it has issues or not.  I have never used it. I just opened it up now and it appears to be fine, but I didn't mess around with it much.

Which ATI card do you have? I also have an ATI and I'm using the 5.11 Radeon driver version (file version 6.14.10.0298) without any problems.  I tend not to rush into downloading new drivers because there's often bugs to be worked out.  I believe in that old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", heh.  You can find this version on their site if you want to give it a try.

When you originally installed the new drivers did you completely remove the old ones first? There is a Catalyst uninstaller program to unistall previous versions.  Are you using the Catalyst package or just the basic drivers?

As far as the sytem detection errors go, that's likely just a Maxis programming issue (surprise, surprise). Mine has never been detected properly.  Do your computer specifications show up fine in DirectX info?

Ok, good luck and let me know how it goes. 

Hmm, sorry, I never thought of that.  You're probably right about it affecting things. I forgot about graphics abilities affecting the number of sims on lots, etc.  I was assuming that the config-log.txt file was just an information file, but yeah, it's quite possible the game uses it to determine things like that.  I don't know anything about coding so I don't know if it's used for that purpose or not. Heh, come to think about it, that might be why my game thinks my computer is crap and only allows me to invite 2 Sims to parties.

Even so, it doesn't sound like it's a problem related to the game itself.  It sounds more like a graphics/driver problem. I'd definitely try rolling the driver back to the previous version and see if that fixes it or not. Good luck.  I hope it works for you.  If not, I'll try to help.

I don't think you should try this.  If you're unsure what regedit is then you probably shouldn't start messing with it.  It might just make matters worse.  Also, if Windows is now seeing the drive then the shortcuts to f: drive should again be functioning properly so it should be unecessary. If the drive still refuses to cooperate and you're going to replace it you're much better off just reformatting to start with, as you'll probably end up doing it anyway. It will save you a lot of time and stress.

If you were to install the new drive without reformatting you will be deluged by errors.  Windows will keep looking for files on a drive that no longer exists so you're going to run into a lot of problems.


Ok, this is where things get confusing.  If Windows can see the actual files (You are using Windows right? If not, this might all be moot.) then it doesn't make sense that it won't allow you to access them.  Windows must know the drive is there if it's showing you the files, but then it's saying that the drive isn't there when you try to do anything with them? That's just odd.  I also can't understand why it won't let you format.  You would think you'd get some kind of error, like tell you the drive doesn't exist- something anyway.

You didn't answer, or I missed it if you did. You said earlier something about an external drive.  Is your f: drive a USB drive or is it physically seated inside the computer? If it is a USB drive, did you try plugging it into a different USB port to see what happens? Can you access the bios with the drive plugged in and see if it is detected there?

Have you tried running scandisk on your f: drive? If not, try it, and see if you get any errors.

Sort of.  The files are all still there, but they're in an unreadable format. When you go to install something or copy new files to the drive the old files get over written, so they no longer continue to take up space once you replace them with new information. Windows will show the drive as being empty (no space taken up). Does that make sense?

You can ignore the config-lot.txt file information.  It doesn't affect anything and shouldn't cause any problems. My system information is detected incorrectly as well.  You can check the directx diagnostic tool and it should show your information correctly (Click START-->RUN and type dxdiag and it will bring up the DirectX tool).

I think Sleepycat is on the right track.  It definitely sounds like a driver issue to me.

Mrmtman, if you can still see drive f: thenthe drive isn't dead.  I don't know why you're unable to format it.  Do you get any errors when you try? What happens exactly? What errors do you get when you try to access the files on that drive?

I'm a bit confused. Is the f: drive a removable USB drive?

That is exactly what reformatting means, Bluesoup.  It wipes the drive clean. It doesn't ACTUALLY delete everything on the drive but it renames everything so that it is no longer readable and makes it so that it can be overwritten. After you reformat you have to reinstall everything from scratch- first Windows, then drivers and all programs. A newly formatted drive will not boot without first installing an operating system. 

After some time the Windows registry will invariably become corrupted by installing/uninstalling programs and drivers, etc (or from spyware or viruses).  A reformat gives you a nice fresh start.

Yeah, what 'he who is more awesome than me' said.  I didn't catch that when I read your post. Even a virus can't physically damage a hard drive, but they can make a hard drive appear to be unbootable by messing with the master boot record. It's possible that the drive might be undetectable on boot but still ok. You can try the drive in another computer to see if it will boot, but if it is infected then you may spread the infection. It could be that your disk was about to fail anyway and it just happened to coincide with the download.

The only way to remove these program entries is to manually go through the registry using regedit and delete any references to your F: drive. I do not recommend this unless you know exactly what you're doing as it can result in a fiery ball of death for everything on your C: drive (if you do attempt this back everything up first).  This is a possibility even if you know what you're doing, so my recommendation is to just skip it and back up the important stuff on your c: drive and take the plunge and reformat and reinstall Windows.  Sorry your drive went kaput.  I've been there.

This sort of problem couldn't possibly have anything to do with your video card. It's an issue with the game itself, not your hardware.  Something else must have fixed it.

Well that's good news, eh? I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that the replacement card works.

No problem.  I'm glad I could help a little bit anyway.  I hear ya on not wanting to replace the mobo and I really hope you're able to work it out without having to spend a lot of money.  It ended up costing me a lot more than I intended as well. I had a nice ATI 9800 pro rendered completely useless by my new motherboard so ended up having to buy a PCIE card.  I bought the board I have (Asus/Asrock- with both AGP and PCIE slots) so that I wouldn't have to upgrade my video card right away.  Too bad my system refused to cooperate with my plans.

You might want to do a google search on your card/ mobo combination and see if you can find anyone with similar issues. It's possible that it could be something simple but your problems sound very similar to mine and I really think it's a hardware problem, or at the very least bad driver coding. If the new card doesn't work I hope you can find one that does. If a different brand doesn't work try a different model. Good luck!

Sorry to hear about your video card woes, Allen.  I just wanted to point out to you that the warning about the minimum amperage is in reference to SLI (Scalable Link Interface) technology.  SLI is a special configuration using two video cards which work together to double your graphics power.  I'm pretty sure that it is only possible using 2 PCIE cards.  Where you're using a single AGP card I can tell you that this is not your problem. 

It's unlikely that it is your power supply (unless it is faulty).  420W should be more than enough to run your standard pc with that video card. The new card you bought might be damaged or might not be compatible with your system.  I've ran into a lot of funky problems with certain video cards not wanting to cooperate with some motherboards.  It couldn't hurt to send the card back and maybe try a different type.  Have you considered trying an ATI card? If you don't want to switch to ATI perhaps try another brand or model of Nvidia card. 

Oh, and while you still have the old card, perhaps you can try downloading newer motherboard chipset drivers (Via? ALi/ULi? SiS?) and see if that solves the crashing issues. You might get lucky.  Unfortunately when I had the same issues the only way I was able to resolve them was to replace the AGP with a PCIE card (or replace the board).  If your motherboard doesn't have a PCIE slot then you might want to try a different model of card or different brand of motherboard.  My AGP problems were initially solved by swapping my Abit board with an MSI board.  They were both Via based, yet with the Abit board and the AGP card I had random crashes, but with the MSI board I didn't. 

Best of luck.  I know how frustrating these sort of problems can be.

Edit: Gah sorry, that warning about the amperage is a bit unclear.  I misread it and thought they were referring to SLI only.  The 'new high-powered video cards' they're referring to are PCIE cards.  The  GeForce 6800GS should run fine on a 12V/18A rail. The requirements are : A minimum 350W system power supply (with 12V current rating of 18A or more). Check out http://www.bfgtech.com/6800GSOC.html