Hi FullMetalRabbit,
I can't say for sure whether you need to upgrade your computer or not because that's up to you, but your graphics chipset is not one of the best, I'll tell you that. (Chipsets are not intended for intense gaming and Sims 3 with all the expansion and stuff packs you have mentioned is one mammoth of a process for the computer to handle.) Your computer's other specifications look fine and are supported by the game -- you might want to update your drivers though, just in case.
If I want to upgrade the graphics chip, what would be best, and are they expensive?
Will do the driver update.
I've got to ask; have you added the TS3W.exe executable to the DEP (data execution prevention, a Windows security feature) exceptions list? I was getting the same error message after I got Pets last year and it stopped crashing after I did that.
No. How exactly do I go about doing that? I'm not really all that tech savy.
Just to check, is this the issue you're having: you have all EP/SPs installed, you open up the game, play it for 10-15 minutes, then it freezes and sometimes it even crashes giving you the error message? Or does it just freeze up? Not very clear on that really. Also, what graphics settings do you play the game on? Intel cards (in this case chipsets) mainly support only low to medium graphics on video games.
For a while, it was freezing for a few seconds, then resuming to whatever was going on in my game, then the few seconds of freeze would happen again, then resume again. It would repeat for however long I felt like putting up with it, but would never go away, until I started a new game. It would happen after a little time or a long time of game play. That was happening for the last month or so, with all of the EPs and SPs installed.
When that issue had first started, it was around the time Ambitions came out and I had gotten the game. However, after a game update, the issue had halted for a while. But then I got more of the games and after an update for Pets, the issue had returned.
What I find odd, is when I got WA not too long after it came out, I wasn't having any issues, other than excavating, which everyone was having issues with. So why it is coming down with the few seconds of freeze issues, just today, was boggling to me, since WA had always run fine in the past.
Before today, I had all of my EPs and SPs installed. I wasn't getting the few seconds of freezes anymore. Instead, the game would just lock up after 10 minutes of game play, followed by a message saying that the game was not responding.
So both of the issues haven't been happening at the same time, it's either one or the other.
