I've got this very annoying issue where my TS2 game at random decides not to recognize my Nvidia card on my laptop. I've got dual cards, one Nvidia (my game is set to use this one), and an Intel card.

First of all, my game on the laptop usually looks great, and the last time I played I didn't have any graphic issues.

The issue:
- The game shows as if it's running off the Intel card. My Config-log file usually shows the Nvidia card, but now it's back to showing the Intel card. My ingame graphics are horrible, with the floodfill water (as it happens when this issue is present).
- This issue has happened before, usually at random. Most of the time my game runs happily on the Nvidia card. Occasionally, my game resets back to the Intel card, for no reason, even if I haven't done any changes to the graphics.
- Last time it happened, I tried installing the SimShadow fix (not sure if it was a related issue, but I removed the mod anyway).
- I think this is the 3rd or 4th time this happens, and previously the issue resolved when I'd been at it for a while, so I'm still not sure what fixed the issue.
- Last time, the Nvidia card suddenly didn't show at all, but this time both the Nvidia panel and everything else shows as if it's working. My game, however, still insists on running on the intel card.

What I've already done:
- Tried restarting my computer (to force Nvidia to restart)
- Checked graphic settings ingame - they're all on high, as they're supposed to be.
- All my TS2 games are set to use the Nvidia card as standard, and this still shows both in the Nvidia panel and when right-clicking the game shortcut.
- The M&G exe settings may be the cause of this issue, because they occasionally (randomly) reset to integrated, and the auto choice is the integrated, even if all the others have the Nvidia card as the auto choice (Nvidia processor with high performance). I think perhaps this happened the first time I messed about trying to fix things.
- Resetting drivers didn't work. Pretty sure it didn't work the last time, either. .
- I did go through the Graphics fixes the last time this happened, and added the Nvidia card to the "Video Cards" file in the Config folder.
- Tried to find some useful information in the Leefish graphics topic, but I've tried most of it already.
- Tried installing the Nvidia Graphics Rules from Leefish - didn't work.
- The Graphics Rules Maker did nothing good for my game the last time, so I'd rather not have anything to do with it.
- I'm already running the game as admin. My game usually runs fine without Compability mode activated.
- Deleted cache files an X amount of times, before restarting the game every single time I've made an adjustment.

Has anyone else had this problem before? And if so, how to fix it? Preferably how to fix it once and for all, because while it doesn't happen often, it takes a lot of effort to fix, since I don't know why it happens.


Edit:
- Rolling back drivers seems to have gotten the "integrated graphics (standard)" setting stuck, no matter how many times I remove/add/re-add the game to use the Nvidia card. Pretty sure this happened the last time, too.
- Installing new drivers also didn't help. Now I get an error message if I try to manually run the program with Nvidia (something like "you do not have rights to choose graphics processor in this menu. Choose a graphic processor for this program in the Nvidia control panel". I don't get this message when trying to manually run other programs (with auto settting integrated) with Nvidia.
- I also can't roll back drivers now, which is a bummer... (pretty sure I didn't uninstall the old ones, though)

This might be a dim observation but it's a basic one so let's get it out the way. Somewhere, something is keeping a track of video card info which it is updating on the fly each time you run the programme. It's not your game files because, as you said, you checked those (I guess graphics rules didn't change - is it read only incidentally?). 'Somewhere, something keeping track' sounds like cache files - so here's the dim question - did you try deleting them?

Already tried that mutiple times (before restarting, after making changes), and it's had no effect what so ever.

There's a possibility this is an issue between the Sims2ep9.exe file and the Nvidia control panel, because that line has showed up weird in the control panel for Nvidia ever since I messed about the first time this happened. I've even tried adding the shortcut I'm using to the list, but to no avail. I'm beginning to wonder if a reinstall might work, but since I've managed to get things to work previously, I'm not prepared to go that way yet.

The "UserProps" in the Doc/TS2/Config folder shows the intel card too, though. I did a backup recently (and thanks for that!!!), and that one is showing the Nvidia card.

This may be more of a Nvidia control panel issue than a game-related issue. Seems Nvidia thinks TS2 should have an auto setting on the integrated card instead of the Nvidia card (while all the other TS2 games have the Nvidia as the auto setting), and manually fixing this doesn't seem to work. Changing the global settings to always be the Nvidia card seems to perhaps work, so maybe it helps to force this once or twice.

EDIT: Changing the global setting to "always Nvidia" seems to have worked, though turning that setting off seems to put the game back in integrated mode.

Edit again: And all of a sudden there's a big black square under pets in CAS. That hasn't happened before. Weird... Maybe shadows turned on randomly.

Big black square has a fix - Nopke I think. I'm glad you got it to work but you still might go over and ask at Leefish - they tend to be better at this sort of thing than we do here.

The last time I had issues was the first time I ran my game with Nopke's shadow mod. Not sure if the issue was related, though.

I'm used to playing without shadows, so I just turned them off again - though I did find i a bit weird that the shadows turned on, because I didn't do it. The only change I'd done to my game was to install the puppy/kitten fur markings mod, and I can't quite see what that's got to do with the graphics (or Nvidia) going all wonky.