Hey Jo, rofl@"bright bunch" hehehe
 
A long shot... i had the same problem as u but with another game.
It could be your sound drivers. I had chosen (some say wisely) to get the latest sound drivers for my onboard sound. However, all games but one ran fine.
 
So.... are the sound drivers something to look at?
 
Another thing to try is DX diagnostics. open a run prompt (Start-->Run) then type dxdiag and press ok. Go through each tab, clicking "test" wherever possible. This will test all of your video and sound thingies
 
Also this tool may show up something:
http://sims2.servopro.com/TS2sysreqc.phtml
Click on "download version 2.5" for the software.
 
Another catch-all thing is to make sure that you have the latest graphics drivers- these are usually obtained from a site like ATI, nVidia etc. I have on occasions seen it where the only drivers to work are from the PC manufacturers site (dell, HP etc.) so maybe you could try there too.
 
Also some information regarding what the crash actually entails would be useful- I know u say it restarts but we can do something about that....
 
Click Start/Run and type Sysdm.cpl, Advanced Tab, Start Up and Recovery/Settings/System Failure/Unmark "Automatically Restart"/Ok/Ok.
 
When the problem happens again, u may see a blue screen instead of rebooting. If u do, note the error message since that is useful.
 
Let us know how it goes, or if u have any other questions. If Im not here (u never know...although it is 3:30am at the mo lol) another one of the bright bunch can help i am sure
 

 
 
 
 

Hello and thanks for the quick response. It's 6pm here downunder.
 
The sound components all tested fine. I've altered the start settings so I get the blue screen and error messages. I'm about to run the sims again so I get an error message to put on here.
 
I tested the directx stuff and most came up fine except for when I tested the drect 3d functioning which left me with a blue/grey screen for a while before I hit the reset button.
 
I'll do that again now to get the error number.
 
Just seems odd that it always worked fine on this computer, for a couple of years almost. I have read elsewhere that some dvd programs had graphic drivers or some such thing that interefered with it but that also doesnt seem to be the thing here. I havent uninstalled xcopy platinum cause I'm sure I"ve run the sims on here before with it, although that program does seem to be incompatible with loads of others.
 
anyway, i'm sure i"ll crash when testing it again so i'll come back later with some error messages.
cheers,
JO

ok, no error messages from doing that but it really killed the computer and took some work to get it up and running again. I've now put the startup and rcovery back to how it was.
 
still crashing when i test the direct3d and when running Sims.
 
I installed graphics drivers again, intel 810 chip I think from memory.
 
I added 'w' to a shortcut target and that got the game running so being a fool i then fiddled with it by dragging back the game data and downloads.
 
That made the game think I had put expansion packs on and it wanted to reinstall deluxe. Only problem is it kept freezing instead of completing the install. I couldnt uninstall the thing cause it continually went back to the install and asking for disc 2 which it refused to recognise as disc 2 !!!!
 
a few system restores later and I'm ready to throw the whole lot out! I even uninstalled sp2 with no difference so installed it again......
 
it's got me knackered. never had a problem with it before and now it's a right royal pain in the b__!
 
anyhoo, thanks for the ideas.
 
Cheers,
JO

it must be my onboard graphics are on the way out.
 
the computer crashed when I tried to run Sachs Marine screensaver and error messages come up when i try to run microsoft plus screensavers.
 
I guess I'm up for a graphics card.
 
cheers,
JO