Can't believe I forgot to post this earlier-update

[CharlieChomper]

I kept meaning to mention this much sooner and somehow kept forgetting to do so. Regardless, I thought I'd mention that nVidia had finally released an updated driver about a month ago.

However, given the current state of things and the passing around of the blame game as to what's causing the BSOD problem, part of me feels almost dubious that this driver will deliver the cure that those of us with this problem have been waiting for.

Regardless, I do plan on trying it out at least and will, of course, hope for the best and will let you know.

Those of you not having the infamous BSOD issue, I'd recommend remaining with the driver you have now and not to touch anything.

[Felicity]

BSOD.....??? Not sure what that is CC!

And I have an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS graphic card if that helps. And what issues does one have to have with BSOD..?

I will probably have left already for my vacation, so I will check in here when I get back.

Thanks again, in advance for your helpful input.

Felicity

[CharlieChomper]

BSOD="Blue Screen of Death". In the pre-XP days, it was just the infamous blue screen that came up when there was a serious problem with Windows and that's where the term came from.

However, in the context I was referring to in my initial post, it refers to an incredibly annoying/frustrating problem that some of us with nVidia cards have been plagued with, with Sims2: the game either going into an endless blue/black blank screen appearing to load until it eventually leads to a crash to the desktop (sometimes with corrupted colors on the desktop) or sometimes even reboots or has even shut down on its own or the user is forced to go into the task manager and "kill" the game to get out of this seemingly endless loading screen, in order to possibly avoid the crash or worse. It's also on its own caused random reboots and shutdowns of computers at times as well.

Both nVidia and EA have gone back and forth as to what the supposed cause of it is or how to resolve it or who is at fault, currently they're blaming Norton or making claims that it's supposedly caused by people not bothering to shut down or disable their anti-viral software when they play even though many of us don't use/have Norton (nor ever had it installed) and always make a point of shutting down our anti-viral and other background tasks before we play.

Currently, there is a cheat that will allow us to play the game and avoid the crash but it's a workaround at best and disables the pixel shaders, which in turn allow for things like bump mapping, being able to see fish (even in tanks), and most of the beautiful graphical effects within the game.

Edited to update info: The first day I tried out the driver, I was able to play Sims2 for close to four hours without the problem appearing. However, it appears to have been a fluke. As I sadly suspected, the driver doesn't fix the problem as everytime I've played my game since then has gone back to the same issue again and usually within anywhere from a half hour to an hour or so of playing. So, those of us suffering from this issue apparently will continue to have to use the cheat since sadly, neither EA nor nVidia appears likely to try and address this issue and seem to consider the matter "closed" in trying to pass the blame along to someone else that may not be responsible or the cause of it.

[Zilla]

I was going to update my video card & RAM for Christmas. I was told on MATY that upgrading the video card would depend on the motherboard I had. They also went on to talk about possible overheating, upgrading the power supply, ect.. I have a NVIDIA GeForce 6100 nForce 430 video card that has never given me problems.

The only reason for the update is so that graphics of my game would be better than they are now which are not bad, they're just not as clear as I'd like them to be. There is a good chance that they may never be what I want them to be, but that's a personal hang up that I'll just have to deal with.

An extra 2 gigs of RAM won't hurt anything, but now I'm wondering if I should just leave my video card alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

[xmasqueen]

I don't what your other specs are but when I tried to upgrade just my video card my motherboard wouldn't support it, so I gave up until the darn thing went bad and then I got both new.

[CharlieChomper]

In all honesty, if it works fine for you and never caused you any problems and you're happy with it, I see no point in having to upgrade the video card.