Flashing red neighbourhood after Seasons install -- fixed if not solved

[notveryawesome]

Yes, after spending three-and-a-half days meticulously updating my hacks, checking for duplicates and conflicts, backing up and removing my files, and then FINALLY installing the Seasons EP, I get this weird fucking graphical glitch when I enter any neighbourhood (I'm glad I'm not epileptic -- it's that bad). I did see the other thread regarding this issue, and have tried all the suggestions mentioned there. Alas, my settings were still set to the highest levels when I entered the game, and there were no strange lighting files that I could simply remove in order to solve the problem. I did used to have a modified version of GunMod's radiance lighting, but I replaced it with the original Maxis lighting before installing Seasons, and it was, indeed, properly titled lighting.txt. Just to see if it would make any difference, I turned shaders off and set everything to the lowest settings, to no avail. Then, when I set things back the way they were (highest settings), the game crashed. This happened both with and without the Downloads folder installed.

Unfortunately, because I use a Windows partition on my iMac for gaming, which requires special Mac drivers for Windows, I can't just download the latest Windows driver from the ATI website (when I try to install it, it gives me an error about no drivers being recognised, which makes sense given the nature of my WinMac setup). For the record, I recently installed the latest version of Boot Camp (the programme that's used to create and maintain the WinMac partitions) as well as the Mac-for-Win drivers, and even double-checked today that they are still current (they are). I tried re-installing the WinMac drivers, and yes I did disable my antivirus and antispyware programmes before doing so. I have not yet tried re-installing Seasons, though that is likely the next step I'll take. I'm at my wit's end here. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

ETA: My graphics card is an ATI Radeon X1600 with a puny 128 MB of memory (I thought it was 512 MB, but now I see that it's not).

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, for starters, my graphics card only has the same amount of RAM as yours, although it's NVidia, not ATI, and I never had this problem, so I can't see that it's a graphics issue.

When you removed the radiance lighting, are you sure you removed everything?  Have you deleted groups.cache from your Sims2 game folder?

I think I'd be inclined to uninstall Seasons and see whether playing Pets has this issue now, which to non-awesome me would indicate that there is something lurking somewhere....and if so, I think I'd just do a complete uninstall/reinstall because it would probably take me less time than trying to hunt down one corrupt file...

Best of luck!

[notveryawesome]

I have all EPs except BV, and have had no problems of this nature prior to installing Seasons. I had installed the new lighting while running Pets. All I did was place a new lighting.txt file in the appropriate area within the base game files, after renaming the original file to lighting.bak. Before installing Seasons, I removed the custom lighting file and changed the original back to lighting.txt, so I'm pretty sure that's not the issue.

BTW, the exact error messages I get when trying to install a new Windows driver are:

Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system.

Followed by:

Setup was unable to complete the installation. Try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA driver before running setup.

Well, duh. Of course it didn't find a driver, because I must use the specialised Mac-for-Windows drivers, not the normal drivers from the ATI website. Unfortunately, I don't know how to get around this problem, assuming it's even the cause of my graphical glitch, which doesn't seem to be the case.

ETA: Yes, I have tried deleting groups.cache, to no avail.

ETA2: I do have two older versions of the Mac-for-Windows drivers. I wonder if rolling back to an older version would help. I'm loathe to do this, however, because the newest version of the Mac-for-Windows stuff installs Boot Camp on the Windows partition, which allows me to boot to the Mac directly from Windows without going through a major rigmarole.

ETA3: I think this is a graphics-card problem, after all, because I keep changing my screen-resolution setting to 1400 x 1050 (the closest I can get to the Mac's native resolution on the Windows partition without blurriness or stretching), but every time I reboot to Windows, the setting is changed to some weird resolution that makes everything tall and thin, which looks crappy. I know I'm changing the screen-setting correctly, because I click 'Apply' and then I get a dialogue-box asking me if I want to keep the new setting, but then it only 'sticks' until the next time I boot Windows. Gah! I'm getting so irritated with this!

I'm wondering if somebody with the same graphics card as me, who has a stable ATI driver for Seasons, could send me the driver file(s), sans installer, as well as instructions on where to place it/them in the Program Files. I've asked ATI to do this, and they simply point me to their Support pages. This of course does no good, because none of their support pages deal with this exact issue (and I've explained this to them numerous times, to no avail).

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sounds to me like rolling back to your last driver might be the only way out - people often report problems with newer drivers and have to roll back, just unfortunate in your case that it means you lose the Boot Camp facility.  Maybe when you get BV you will find the drivers that aren't working right at present will work.....you never know.

[notveryawesome]

Well, I've tried the last driver, and have yet to try the one before that. It didn't work. Actually, I'm suspicious that this is lighting-related after all, but I'm confuzzled. I'd removed the hacked lighting file that I installed with Pets and restored the original (I thought), but I've since realised that my game still has dawn and dusk. Unless this is a feature of Seasons, something is very wrong, yet the lighting file that's in C:/Program Files/EA Games/The Sims 2/TS Data/Res/Lighting is time-stamped August 17, 2004, so it has to be the original, yet I'm still getting dawn and dusk, which indicates that the modified lighting is still in use somewhere, unbeknownst to me. WTF?

I hate to do it, but I think I'll have to re-install the entire game. What a PITA, but at least I have all my backed-up hoods, etc.

ETA: Well, I'm still not sure exactly what caused the problem, but a complete uninstall and reinstall of my entire game seems to have solved it (I'm now having other issues, but that's beside the point). I suspect that there was some weird lighting file lurking about in my folders, but I can't know for sure, since I never found it. *shrugs*