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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 21st May 2009 at 10:50 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Graphics Issue: Certain Outfits have holes in them!
Hey, I've been playing the Sims 2 ever since it came out and now have every expansion pack for it. I've never experienced any issues with the game until I recently re-installed it after upgrading to Vista.

My problem now is that certain outfits (I guess certain meshes are the problem) appear to be missing polygons... It looks as if there are holes in the outifts! Diamond shaped holes! Haha. But, really. This is not funny. It's really annoying actually. I've also noticed that when it snows the "3D" snow does not appear... and when I move the camera around outside, the edges of the screen have blinking white triangles around them. This makes no sense to me.

I've tried resolving the issue by reinstalling the game, in order of release date. No changes. I've also tried patching each and every expansion pack, including the original game, in order. No change. I've tried re-installing the drivers to my graphics card. No change.

My System Specs:
Purchased Mid 2004
CPU: Pentium4 3.4Ghz w/ HyperThreading
Graphics Card: 215MB ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate

Aye, aye, aye... Can anyone please help me?
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Née whiterider
retired moderator
#2 Old 22nd May 2009 at 5:30 PM
Wow, your graphics card is five years old. I'm not surprised it can't cope with TS2 on top of Vista. This guide is written for people with integrated graphics, but it can also apply to very weak graphics cards like yours: Game Help:Onboard Graphicswiki

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
shiny!
retired moderator
#3 Old 22nd May 2009 at 11:37 PM
That was ATI's top end gamer's card back in the day. Although it is several generations old it shouldn't have problems with TS2..provided you hadn't 'upgraded' to Vista. I had it before I upgraded my last computer and unless I threw a ton of cc at it the game ran great. My game did lag a bit when I threw all my several GB of cc at it but I also had later expansions. That entire computer is WAY too weak to be running Vista, especially Vista Ultimate. You need to get rid of Vista and install XP back on it.

The card has to be quite old at this point so it could be that it's simply wearing out. However, first thing we need to do is rule out a software issue.. Back up your data and do a reformat with a fresh install of XP. Make sure you download all the necessary drivers for your computer.. graphics, sound, chipset, and ethernet at minimum. Also get the latest directx from Microsoft.com and download all the operating system updates using Windows Update (Do NOT download any drivers via that).

Once you've provided your computer with a reasonable operating system, just the base game, patch and play. Do not add any of your user data back in. See if you still have problems. If you have problems at that point then it's gotta be a hardware problem. If you don't then continue installing each expansion the same way. Install, patch play, until you find an expansion pack that gives you problems.

If you insist on keeping Vista Ultimate on your computer understand that you will probably continue to have problems playing the Sims games and you could end up wearing out your computer faster since it's not equipped to deal with that OS.
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