Why wont my sims 2 game work????????????

Question

I am only 12 years old, so i dont know a lot about computers. I had gotten sims 2 deluxe a couple months ago, and it worked perfectly back then. but then i got a virus and my dad had to reboot the whole computer, and he put windows xp on it. i installed the sims 2 game again, but it tlod me i needed a directx 9.0c compatible graphics adapter. So these past few weeks i've been downloading things i come to find out i dont even need, and i've been told that i need a video card, but im not buying one because my game worked perfectly fine 3 months ago! when i go to dxdiag, it wont tell me what video card i have. i am getting insanely angry, please someone help me out here?????????

Answer 1

take to best buy and they will tell you what to do.

i know i havve problems with sims2 all the time.

Answer 2

Lexi, I'm going to try to help you, but I don't know a lot about computers either.  I know quite a bit about the sims 2 games, but not a lot about computers.

First of all, your dxdiag should actually tell you what video card you have.  When you click on Start and then on Run and type in dxdiag, a page should pop up that has several tabs across the top of it.  The tab that you need to click on says Display and then there are boxes on that page.  The top left box should say Device.  Then, inside of that box you should see Name, Manufacturer, Chip Type, DAC Type, Approx. Total Memory, Current Display Mode and Monitor.  The name of the video card you have installed should be to the right of Name.

If that really does not tell you the name of the video or graphics card that you have, then there is another way to find out.  When you are looking at your desktop, you need to right-click on My Computer.  Now scroll down and click on Properties.  Now click on Hardware, then on Device Manager.  Once that opens you will need to double-click on the line that says Display Adapters.  You should now see the name of the video card that you have installed on your computer.  You need this name and number to be able to go to the manufacturer's site to download the latest drivers for your card.

Now, I do want to tell you something.  If the game was working before your Dad reformatted your computer and put XP on, then it will more than likely work again.  I have a feeling that what happened is that when your Dad reformatted, it replaced the drivers for your video card with older drivers.  It's possible that the only thing you will need to do is to update your drivers and that may solve your problem.

I play mine on a computer that has XP and from what I've heard that's actually better as Vista has some problems sometimes with sims 2 games and it also requires more ram to run Vista than to run XP.  Which takes away ram that the game can use.  So, once we figure out what's messing up and get that fixed, your game may actually work better than it did before.  Well, that's assuming that you used to have Vista on it I mean.

So, before I can really help you any further, I need for you to try again to see if you can figure out the name of the video card you are using.

If you really can't find the name of your video card though, then you will either have to get someone who knows how to fix computers to help you at your house, take it into a computer repair shop such as the Geek Squad at Best Buy or at least call EA Techs themselves.  I do have the phone number for them.

You may contact EA by calling their toll free number 1-866-543-5435 within the US. If calling internationally dial 650-628-4306.

If you edit your original question with the information for your video card, I will try to help more.  Also, can you ask your Dad if he did what is called "reformatting" the computer?  I think that's what you mean, but I'm not positive.  Reformatting is when basically everything is taken off the computer, including what's in the Registry files and then you have to put a new operating system (such as XP) back on and add everything else back on to get the computer up and running again.  If that's not what he did, maybe you can explain what it was that he actually did.  The reason I am asking if because sometimes when the sims 2 games are uninstalled, they end up leaving behind files in the registry and when you try to reinstall, those files cause a problem.  EA has directions on how to locate and remove those files completely so that you can reinstall without any problems.  But I need to know if the registry files were wiped out entirely or not.  If they were, then there shouldn't have been any "leftover" files from sims 2 games in the registry to cause any problems.