# The Sims 2 Crashes and Freezes after minutes of playing



## simpoonie (Oct 9, 2004)

my computer specs:

sony vaio laptop pcg-fr825p
2.66 GHZ processor
512 RAM
Radeon IGP 345M 64MB display card.

i can play with sims 2 for at least 20 mins after that screen freezes though i can still hear the sound and can still move my mouse.i haven't downloaded any custom skin.

i've re-install several times. does it have something to do with my display card.? 'm getting frustrated!!!!  please help. tnx.


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## CoasterFreak (Aug 22, 2003)

Welcome to TSG :up:

Maxis games are my specialty 

Basically, it usually is a combination of your graphics card, processor, and RAM/Memory. The Sims and mostly all other Maxis games are memory and processor hogs. Try not to have anything else running while you play the game. If you have any other problems, feel free to post back.


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## gaya2081 (Oct 11, 2004)

Also you might want to disable your anti-virus auto-protect, which some people might consider risky, but was the only thing that helped me with this problem...of course i also unplug my network cable when I do this.


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## CoasterFreak (Aug 22, 2003)

Yea gaya is right, remove yourself from the internet, disable anti-virus programs, and ensure you have enough free resources.


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## stevetwatson (Oct 13, 2004)

simpoonie,

You're not the only one  .

I have a Sony laptop with IGP 345M Graphics Card and have exactly the same problem. I've tried stopping all unecessary programs, switched off anti-virus etc, even increased the amount of memory available to the graphics card from the standard 64MB to 128MB (you can do this through the BIOS menu by pressing F2 when your laptop first starts).

I've been checking various forums and there are a number of others with exactly the same problem. It's 99.99% certain that its the Graphics card to blame. I've run Sims 2 on my desktop PC which is a much lower spec but with an Nvidia GeForce graphics card and it runs fine.

To make matters worse the manufacturers of the card, ATI, dont even provide support for laptop versions of the card (the obviously know something we don't), so no chance of an updated driver to save the day!

One last hope remains - I've just downloaded a set of "tweaked" drivers called Omega from this site: http://www.omegadrivers.net/. They are meant to optimise the performance of the IGP 345M card although they are not officially supported by ATI (but as mentioned neither are the existing drivers so nothing to lose really!)

I'll be testing this out with Sims 2 tonight and will post back if it works (fingers crossed!)

The only other slim hope is that Maxis produce a patch release of the Sims which doesn't crash with this card - I guess if enough people like us complain to their support website then you never know...


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## stevetwatson (Oct 13, 2004)

Good News - the Omega drivers seem to have done the trick. After installing these drivers my daughters have just been on the Sims for 3 hours non-stop with no lock-ups.

The drivers can be downloaded from the link I posted in the previous reply. Good Luck!


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## simpoonie (Oct 9, 2004)

many thanks for all the replies....
i'll try to download and install that omega driver....
hope it'll work...


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## simpoonie (Oct 9, 2004)

just a quick question after checking the omega site....would this work on XP Professional?many thanks


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## stevetwatson (Oct 13, 2004)

I'm running XP Home edition on my laptop, but I can't see any reason why you would have a problem with XP professional edition. The only thing that might cause you problems (on XP generally) would be if you don't have admin rights which may prevent you installing the updated driver files.


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

Anything that has 'XP' next to it or the XP logo with it means it will work on XP, whether it's HOME or PROFESSIONAL.


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## simpoonie (Oct 9, 2004)

omega driver works for me as well. thnaks very much


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## simpoonie (Oct 9, 2004)

omega driver works for me as well. thanks very much


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