Closed Sims 2 and Graphics Cards - the fixes.

@namakyori : Well, I just read through all the discussion really carefully (nope, I never do it ^^ ), I did understand you do have graphics glitches but now I start to understand better. Certainly, the first issue is your processor, not only a celeron but only 1.86Ghz, win8 will start eating a big part of the resources, even if it's resourceless than windows seven. You do have enough in memory ram, and graphics for play sims 2 and sims 3. Actually you will play sims 2 very well with that specs and winXP, better than I used to play it on my old pc.
Try update first your motherboard, the website I pointed you before is working with a french website : http://www.touslesdrivers.com/ is a big, huge and massive drivers data base
Get in and go to the 3rd tab "Mes drivers" the same plugin you put for the site ma-config will run and detect which drivers can be updated. Find your last motherboard driver update. You can also try the same for the graphics. Every other drivers for externals doesn't matter (keyboard, mouse, CD rom, screen, taptouch etc...), and if you find a Ethernet controller is up to you if you want to upgraded now.
Just try to have the last fixes for your laptop.
If you need help with the website (in french) or with the decision to update this or those drivers, I'll be here today and I'm sure the community can help.

Once drivers up to date, try the game again, first without the kiri fix and secondly with the fix. I think you shouldn't try it in windows compatibility, I rarely see work it, just for an old '98 game and in windows 7, Windows 8 is actually missing some old windows system kernel because of the revamp they made.
But run Sims 2 only in administrator mode.

If you want to re-install all the game to give it a try, try first to change your Documents/EA GAMES/The sims 2 folder name to recreate one new (I usually rename it "The sims 2 old" or "The sims 2 -"). if it's still doesn't work and still want to give it a try, re install. I my case I use a big torrent easy to find called Sims 2 All-In-One ; I did get veeeeeery lazy through the time to install from all the Cds and Dvds. I actually install Sims 3 from Origin now.
When uninstalled, get a clean with CCleaner (also delete register files but save a backup file before the delete).

Once re-install give it a try only changing the Video cards file, try it, and if it's still not working try with the graphics rules file.
BTW @celebkiriedhel, I did forget tell you that I also put the files in The Sims 2 (original) folder, they are in Apartment, M&G and Sims 2 (normally it was never need it but that helped me).

Another last thing, while you are trying all this steps, get all the config-log for kiri and try to report every change, even if it's worst and tell us what you did change. When trying Higher configurations and resolutions, first load the game without changes (leave the default detection configuration), try a little bit, check all the problems, glitches and close-load again the game to try higher configs.
Tell us every thing you can see, we are not near you so we will try to understand what happens in every step this way.

I resume :
1st update drivers (motherboard and graphics), I really don't know if updating BIOS can help and if you don't know who is it done better leave it that way.
2nd try changing name document folder The sims 2 (I'm pretty that won't do anything unless you have a CC or a cache file corrupted).
3rd give a shoot to reinstall, may be that can help.
Resume or report changes in the game. Long and painful but I'm pretty sure there is a way to make the Intel Celeron run sims 2 in win 8.

@Ekkii thank you so much. I'm going to try to update the motherboard and graphics, however anytime I tried it through device manager, it'd say "oh hey, btw, your drivers are up to date!" Now, the drivers I seem to have is from September of last year. I'm gonna see if I can do it manually. I'll keep you updated.

Like I said, I ran this on a 7-year-old system with a processor even weaker than this one. So this one should run Sims 2 well, in theory.

Edit: So far, Intel is forcing me to go to Asus' site for drivers. So I do just that and I still can't update. Gonna talk to ASUS now.

Thanks Ekkii! I really appreciate you helping out. I don't really know that much about motherboard and so on - just familiar with the graphic rules.

Nama - like Ekkii said - the operating system Windows 8, uses up much more of your processor than the old one did. So you actually have less processing power for your games on this system than on Windows 7 or XP.

So in other words, I should've listened to my husband when he suggested to downgrade to 7, lol. It probably would've caused less issues, but I'm in too deep now. :/

Yes. You should have listened to your husband. LOL. It's sad but true fact that the older and more unsupported a game gets the less and less likely that it is to work on new O/S.

Actually, downgrading to seven can cause you others troubles in your others day-life software, like Skype which use a lots of resources that you mention but they maybe other minors issues.
You said you are a web designer, if you downgrade you can have troubles with the process managing for photoshop, if you use dreamwaver it can become "nightmare-waver" instead. It maybe better if you use seven 32 bits (x86) instead of 64. Windows 8 use less resources and space than Seven. What win 8 doesn't do is use old system code that they changed for a better and faster (and cleaner) operating system, in this case, Sims 2 was launched in 2004 for XP systems and having in mind Vista. The game is using system code built since Windows NT 4, in windows 8 the game is desperately searching for the missing code to complete some actions ; like in web, is you use javascript from a online library but was change to improve the code, your website built on the old code will not find some of the strings or lines used before.

You will may need to revalue the other softwares. Most of them should work fine, it will just be like windows is and always was, a little bit slower. And for the first time since Win98, Microsoft gave us an OS that manages better it own structure. That's why you can have problems downgrading.
BUT it will be better for running sims 2 and won't change for the sims 3.

Sooo... I do recommend you get back to seven, the steps for running sims 2 should be the same and you won't have resolutions problems, like the black screen glitch from win 8.
Will the sims 2 run without the graphic glitch ? I really don't know if the problem is from the integrate graphic or the processor, even maybe a combination of the two, the same reports as yours in youtube or forums use the Intel HD Graphics and a Intel Celeron, that won't help us to know which one is the troublemaker, but in all the threads they said using win8.

Part of why I got a new laptop (other than the other one being 7 years old is because it was getting harder to do stuff. I personally don't use Dreamweaver (got used to hand-coding through notepad and never got the gist of using Dreamweaver). The net was bogged down too.

The problem with me downgrading to 7 now is that it means a full reformat, which will render my laptop useless outside of surfing the net for several days while I reinstall 437290473074 programs (exaggerating a little), and it might not even work.

I'm still talking to Asus to get my drivers updated.

Drivers updated now. That was a pain in the tucchis.

I'm opening up the game with Kiri's last fix. I'll keep you updated on any progress.

Nope. *sigh* Still flickering, gonna try a new Sims 2 folder.

Try this drivers, suggested from ma-config.com.
This one for your integrated graphics since you are using a generic driver this one is made for you graphic : https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_...153318.exe

This one for the motherboard, same thing the driver used is a generic driver : https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_...0.1089.zip

To know about generic drivers, the name of the INF file is relevant, mostly generic intel drivers start "oem", that stand for "Original equipment manufacturer".
In your review specs configuration in this tab you can find more about your drivers which can be updated.
http://www.ma-config.com/en/publish/temp...he-drivers

Edit : seems that I post to late , try an other checking in ma-config.com just in case

I checked again, but the thing is, the generic drivers don't seem to want to install because it wants me to install the drivers that Asus provided. Which I did, after about an hour of roundabout, lol.

I guess I was able to update the motherboard?

Also RE: new Sims 2 folder, I didn't bother to change anything, so I'm still running on 1024x768, flickering still persists, but gonna restart my computer for the motherboard update.

Okay, I was able to update the motherboard, but I can't seem to update the graphics card with the generic drivers.

@namakyori I will go for today, I may check later on your progress through the testings
I though about something, if you have enough space in your hard drive, you can install a virtual machine with WinXp to play sims 2, it would be like a dedicated machine only for sims.