Closed Sims 2 and Graphics Cards - the fixes.

@celebkiriedhel, just for the record and in case you were talking to me, I did downgrade my notebook back to Win 8 after all of ten minutes or so with Win 8.1, so everything's well in the Land of Nix in that respect.

Thanks Nix - I wasn't meaning you particularly - Both Nama and Ikii have problems with Windows 8.1, and I'm thinking that they should downgrade to Windows 8 too.

I'm looking up a way to do so, but it looks like I can't do it without reinstalling everything fresh...which means basically hours of reinstalling everything I've installed in the past 2 weeks. Which would render me not able to do much of anything for the next several days. *sigh*

And my issue was already there with 8. I love Sims 2, but it's literally the only game giving me issues. I have Sims 3 (all ep's except ITF and no SP's), FFXI, Atlantica Online, and like 2 other games on this laptop, all running perfectly under 8.1 (and 8).

@celebkiriedhel here's my config-log.

For me, I cannot downgrade windows for work issues. Playing Sims 2 was just for the old times when sims did really goes out with their friends and throw big parties and get real vacations.

I don't want to brag is only for the help you guys are bring in here with sims 2, about it but I have very high PC specs. There are pretty high for work reasons (not enough in my opinion XD ) it was meant like a mini workstation and I can play Sims 3 high core-modded (nraas and more) without losing frames. Every new game that come out I can play it to full specs : Skyrim is high graphic modded, Thief4 is in high, Batman, I'm usually server for Left4Dead, The Witcher, etc ...
This are my specs, I actually work in 3D animation.

The other PC has the same specs that I do, but unfortunately we have a problem with the mobo and started to unrecognized the graphics slots, we have already contact the manufacturer. We are using the integrate graphics controllers for that one for the moment till we find a solution to recognize the two graphic cards.
By the way, never buy in AsRock, the tech support is awful.

I have to say, thank you so much for the support in here for an old game such as the sims 2, it is never easy to make old games work.

Attached File(s)

  THORGAL-config-log.txt (Size: 10.25 KB / Downloads: 446)

Hello again, I found a way to play it. Smooth a very nice.
My screen resolution is 1600x900. I found that even making changes in the graphics rules to support the resolution, the game turn black on mouse click. Setting the resolution in 1440x900 (just a res down) does the trick. I can play it, I won't ask for more I'm happy with that .

@namakyori try it on your PC, down the resolution in full screen not in windowed.

@Ekkii, that fixed my full screen issue (good news).

Bad news, my original issue still persists. I'm going to see if windowed/compatibility mode gets rid of the flickering (which is the main reason why I came here).

Edit: Nope, windowed/compatibility mode didn't get rid of the black screen issue. So basically, if I want to play windowed, I can't have the game in compatibility mode, and if I want to play full screen, I have to. But the flickering in both cases still persists.

Ekki's machine has about 2x more grunt than yours Nama.

Ekkii - thanks for that. So pleased to hear that going down 1 size helps. Will put that in the front post for people.

I know, but at least the side issue has been fixed.

At this point, I'm thinking that reinstalling the game may be my only choice. I just don't want to go through all that only for it to not work.

You think that might help? Or am I pretty much stuck for now?

@namakyori I want to try to help you, can you resume everything you try until now and what happened with every try? maybe that can help you too to try to understand where is the problem.
And can you tell me your pc specs ? (you can try the site I used http://www.ma-config.com/ , it will scan you PC for every driver and hardware, the site is really secure I use it since 2006).

I have tried:

Dropping everything to low settings
Raised them to high
Turned off custom content
Tried another neighborhood (I only play in one, so I wanted to see if it was just that neighborhood, or if it's game-wide)
Windowed mode (works without compatibility mode)
Fullscreen (I had that black screen issue while in compatibility mode, it's fine outside of compatibility mode)

So far, Kiri has made 3 (4?) fixes for me, all of which still had the flickering (a couple of fixes mostly eliminated the flickering in neighborhood mode pre-upgrade) and this pain in the butt issue when I try to add walls (posted it on Tumblr here).

I played Sims 2 on another laptop with an intel 945 express chipset running Vista. This didn't happen even on high graphics.

http://www.ma-config.com/en/publish/temp...-1_summary

That's my stats.