Sims 3 Driver Display Error

June 7, 2009 at 1:05 am (Uncategorized) (dell sims, display driver error, sims 3, sims3)

I knew I had to get the Sims 3, because I was of course addicted to the first and second versions. In the tiny font on the back of the box read ‘system requirements’ which a bunch of seemingly insignificant jumbled letters and numbers. WARNING: THESE ARE VERY SIGNIFICANT TO THE OPERATION OF THE GAME! Under PC, CPU, (yes keep going) eventually you get to “A 128 mb video card with support for pixel shader 2.0. Then, following this statement are all the video cards supported. Don’t know yours? Should definitely find out, and if you’re not lucky like me, you’ll be returning the game or waiting until you upgrade your video card (in this case, it was impossible for me to).

So enough with all the scary mumbo jumbo! This is for anyone who experiences the driver display error after ..what, a good 20 minutes into to the game? This is what happened to me, on my Dell Latitude

1. A loud beep occurs

2. Suddenly, the game loses all functionality and now youre stuck with oversized icons (about 5x their normal size) in what seems to be a ‘safe mode’.

3. Your only option seems to be power off. Now, some may experience a normal shut down and reboot. Me? No, I had to system restore, losing the game install since my restore point was for prior..

Now, sepnding countless hours on the phone with dell, I realized this driver cannot be upgraded unless it is by a third party. If you are running the 945GM Chipset Family, you’re basically SOL for updating since even intel will not be recognized as a dell source. This is because the motherboard is linked directly in with the video card, and it knows whether it is from Dell or not. Sadly, dell has no released any drivers to correct this problem, from what I saw online and from what the dell tech said to me. ok, so what now? First, I realized that my BIOS driver was out of date, and I installed the newer driver from the dell website. I was running a08 and installed a10. Now, after I had updated the BIOS, I finally, for one last god awful time loaded the Sims 3 back onto my computer. Once in, I changed all the graphics under settings and went for low on most options. Yes, the graphics reverted slightly back to sims2, but you know what, now I can play my $50 game on my laptop without

1. returning the darn thing

or

2. buying an entirely new laptop. You know what? My Dell Lat Xp professional works great. Luckily, I was able to tweak my system to be able to handle it. Others, you may not be so lucky. Hopefully this was a helpful topic, and all I can say is, don’t give up. Look for 3rd party drivers, check your video card compatibility, and lower the graphic specs. Good luck!