bad drivers? no positive what the problem is..?

Question

some background story i had bought a PNY VERTO GEFORCE NVIDIA 6600 AGP CARD back in april for 4 months that i owned it my game (the sims 2 plus all the expansion packs) worked perfectly no glitches, no crashes, nothing it worked perfect! well last month i started getting glitches and a friend of mine suggested i update my drivers so i did this, well being i'm not 100% computer savvy i think i deleted something i should not have so when i tried to run the sims i was getting huge white lined artifacts and like boxy white things and everything was messed up. so i took it into this guys shop that i know and he put in one of his video cards and my game worked perfect! so we figured out my card was just bad. so i returned it to the manufacturer (cause im still under warranty) and they sent me a new card well i put the new card in last night and i'm still getting the same problems (the white lined artifacts) what do i do to fix this?

before someone asks i have an HP Pavillion AMD with 1 gb of ram i don't know what kind of motherboard i have and don't know how to figure that out, as for the processor don't know about that either. im not all computer savvy NOT AT ALL. so i wouldn't know how to change anything in BIOS or anything like that. i just don't know what else to do, why did that other guys card work in my machine but this brand new one won't? thats what throws me....

i have norton 2006 and spysweeper and spybot search & destroy i run the scans all the time and everything comes back as clean i'm not showing any errors like that...?

Answer 1

You can get all the details on your hardware set up from your game installation.
====Start/Programs/EA Games/(your sims 2 game)/ EAsy Info
Just run that and it will give the run down on all your hardware and also advise on which drivers you need.

====It's possible that your video card doesn't have DirectX properly assocated with it. To test that...
Run a diagnostic from START/RUN
type in

dxdiag

===A final test that I can think of is to see what the game tester thinks of your computer with this test
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

be sure to choose the expansion pack if any, that your game is trying to run. Any red codes should be investigated.

Good luck.

Answer 2

OK.
First off, and to find out what is in your computer,
go to www.belarc.com, click on the download link and download Belarc Advisor version 7.2. It is freeware and will give you a 'detailed' report of what is in your computer including all installed software, license numbers, etc. etc. and will also give you the option to print out the report.
>Second: If you do not have it, go to www.download.com and download AdAware SE and Spybot Search and Destroy, both are freeware programs. Also while at www.download.com, download Spyware Blaster. It is a small program and runs in the background blocking spyware from entering. Also, if you do not have one, purchase and install a Good AntiVirus Software program. I like Norton System Works Professional 2006 because you receive one year of free auto-updates and it also has a Utilities feature that will let you tune-up your computer.
>Third: After downloading the above programs, shut down the computer and wait a couple of minutes.
>Fourth:Now, after turning back on your computer, run a 'full-up' system scan of "My Computer" with 'each' program. Your 'white lined artifacts' sound like you have some spyware lurking around in your had drive. Spyware Blaster does not have a scan feature. But it does block spyware from entering.
>Fifth: After running the above scans, shut down the computer and leave alone for about 5 minutes.
>Sixth: Restart and reload the CD for your new Video Card which will in turn reset the drivers.
Hope this helps to get rid of your problems.