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Intel® 82915G/82910GL Express Chipset Family

The Sims* 2 Game Crashes or Freezes During Game Play

Symptom(s):
The Sims* 2 game crashes or freezes (locks up) during game play.

Error: “The ialmrnt5 display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog will be displayed giving you a chance to upload data about this failure to Microsoft.”

Error: “The graphics adapter in this system experienced an internal error. Please contact your graphics adapter manufacturer for technical support. The application will now terminate.”

Blue screen appears with STOP error 0×000000EA referencing the ialmrnt5 display driver file.

Solution:
Use the latest Intel® graphics driver to correct this issue. Refer to the driver README file for installation instructions as needed.

Note: If you continue to experience issues running the game with the latest graphics driver, try running the game with the -w switch which forces the game to run in a window.

To add the -w switch, use the following steps:

  1. Right-click on the The Sims 2 game and left-click on Properties. You can do this either on the game’s shortcut on the desktop or on the game’s entry in the Start menu.
  2. Add a space and -w to he end of the Target field, so that it looks like this: The actual path may vary depending on where the game was installed. Make sure that the -w goes outside the quotation marks and that there is a space between the last quotation mark and the -w.
  3. Click OK.

This applies to:

Intel® 82915G/82910GL Express Chipset Family

Solution ID: CS-016497

Date Created: 17-Oct-2004

Last Modified: 27-Jan-2006