Driver Issue?

[Goldenbow]

 I'm having random crashes in neighboorhood view .It usually happens like this; I'll be scrolling ,the cursor will stop, the screen freezes then CRASH and either the system reboots (twice this happened) or it crashes to desktop (once, this last time). When it crashed this last time there was this error message: "Direct3D returned an error: D3DERR_NOT AVAILABLE. The application will now terminate." Also the moniter looked like it had reverted to 8 bit color (everything was fuzzy and the type was huge). I just bought this computer about a month ago.Its a Gateway 5028 with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ with 2.00 GHz and 1.00 GB of RAM. The graphics card is a GeForce 6600 with the latestdrivers.       My Operating System is Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002. Although when I run DirectX Diagnostic Tool it tells me my Operating System is Windows XP Professional 5.1 Build. (don't know if that means anything)  I know thanks to looking around this sight, that there are issues with the latest drivers for this graphics card (funky colored pillows,newspapers,ect) and I was wondering is the crashing related and what are my options? Please keep in mind I'm not by any stretch a computer pro but I am learning.

[Li'l Brudder]

What are you games(TS2 Related) that you own?  NL, Uni, Base?  Be specific.

[Goldenbow]

I have all of them installed.

[nectere]

Here is some info on the issue

Did you try an acceleration test? Which DirectX are you running? What version? Anyway good luck.

[Goldenbow]

 The version listed is DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904). And yes, I've ran the tests and passed them all. However, I just noticed my sound acceleration was maxed out, I'll try bumping that down a notch and see what happens. I just remembered, in the lot I was playing before the last crash  the sound coming out of the  sims stereos was getting pretty choppy. Thanks for the links nectere, I'll check them out.