I haven't found any of this listed anywhere, but over the last week my game went from just fine to nearly unplayable.

Twice while playing the same household I had sudden crashes, not just to desktop, but an entire system reboot. The second time it happened I was sent to this error message when I reported this to Microsoft:
oca.microsoft.com/en/response.aspx?SGD=5f2d6e7e-ab10-4e36-be9a-14f22e0c06ff&SID=11

On that advice I updated my drivers.

This has made the problem worse. When I go into any neighborhood I get strange graphics glitches like the big silver wing thing in this picture:

This usually occurs when I'm rotating or zooming in.

Worse the screen sometimes goes to a blank blue screen when I rotate or zoom in, during which time the harddrive is being accessed--whether in neighborhood or on a lot. It will do this a few times and then reboot the system. When I report to Microsoft I get either the error above, or a page saying This Error is Being Researched.

When I remove all downloads the problem goes away. It does not reoccur when I put in hacks, or skins. I spent most of today putting my objects back in a few at a time, and then rotating them out to an "OK folder." With each small batch the problem was gone. After I had gone through every object the problem didn't happen. I put everything back in and it started the game. And the graphics glitch and the blue screen thing started right up again, so it isn't apparently caused by a single object.

Wondering if I'd hit some sort of limit on downloads I took out about 500MB of objects, to well below the amount of downloaded objects when the problem started.

I'm running Sims2 Uni, NL and the holiday pack.

My system is:
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 2002
Service Pack 2

AMD Athelon XP 2500+
1.85 GHZ 1GB RAM

NVidia GEForce4 MX 4000
128 MB memory
Driver 6.14.0010.8195

I notice that my graphics card isn't supported for NL, though it ran just fine until early last week. (Until just after the new XP automatic update...) I'm thinking the problem may be that the poor old Graphics card just can't take it any more.

Last edited by Lerf1950 : 26th Dec 2005 at 6:30 AM.

i get the same wing thing in the neighbourhood view, only mines green. it emanates from any custom lot where there has been change in elevation of the terrain. this ony occured for me after installing NL. you could see if that is the same for you. i have found no solution, removing my downloads doesn't solve it so it is not anything there. i sometimes i am able to level the terrain of the lot again, but some i can't because of the complexity of the build, so i delete them. i hate the look of that wing thing
my graphics card is unsupported too but runs fine apart from that glitch, so i can't explain the other probs you have
updating drivers doesn't always solve problems and can make new ones. you could try rolling back or downloading a previous version. if you do that make sure you completely remove the current version before installing the driver you want. i use omega drivers, at www.omegadrivers.net, and then the latest seems to work ok. i think they do ones for NVidia as well (mines radeon)
not much help i know, but just know you aren't alone

Looks like it was an overworked Graphics card. I now have a Radeon 9550 and the games runs great. (And for the first time I get bump maps and the special events camera!)