The Sims 2 Blue Screen of Death

[layziegtp]

Hi everybody! I'm having a really, really bad problem with The Sims 2. I've emailed EA Technical Support about it, but I doubt they will be able to help. Maybe you guys can be my lifesaver. I don't want to retype the whole thing, so here's a copy of what I sent them.

My problem has to do with the sims hard locking my computer. After I pop in the CD, the game autoruns and tries to start, but immediately after the Sims 2 splash screen disappears, the screen goes black, followed by a blue screen. The stop code is always the same, and begins with 0x0000008e, but no other information is given, no drivers are named, nothing.

My system specs are as follows:
3.2Ghz P4
1024MB RAM
Asus P5GD1-VM Motherboard
GeForce 6600GT (PCI Express)
Windows XP (SP2 installed)

I've checked everything I can think of. System temperatures are not a problem, I've made sure the RAM is set to "By SPD", I've tried disabling hyperthreading, there are no other applications running in the background at all, I'm using the newest certified Nvidia drivers (77.84)... I've even tried running in compatibility mode, windowed, lowering the refresh rate of the monitor, nothing works.

I really want to play this game, and the only other thing that comes to mind is uninstalling service pack 2, but I don't want to do that for just this one game. No other games or applications have this problem. Is there anything else I can do, or is there another patch in the works that might help?

Am I stuck not being able to play because of some poorly written code, or is the problem something that I'm doing (or not doing?) right?

I'm almost positive now that the problem is due to SP2, but maybe there is something that I havn't thought of. Help!!!