Expert: Mark Thomas - 1/9/2011

Question
QUESTION: I'm honestly not sure what specific catagory this would fall under, but I only see this problem when playing a game.
Everytime I go to play The Sims 3, my screen will go completely black for just a few seconds then come back on to the game.  
When I leave the game there is an error message that appears saying 'Display driver igfx stopped responding and has recovered.' I have no clue what that means or how to fix it.
if this doesn't fall under your category, could you please let me know which category it belongs to so I can get an answer to my question. Thanks.

ANSWER: Hello Brittany

Thanks for your question and I will give you the steps to fix this very common issue, which occurs when windows needs to set instruction packets sets of data via your integrated Intel graphics chip. Basically the game that you are playing is eating up a lot of memory and the chip is struggling to cope with this.
This is the method of fixing it in Windows Vista

Click on the "Start" button on the bottom of your screen and select the "Search" panel.

Search for "Device Manager" and then hit your "Enter" button.

Scroll down to the "Displays" icon in the Device Manager and right click on your "IFGX" driver from the menu. Click on the "Uninstall" button.

Select "Yes" on the next page and then click the "Restart" option when you are prompted.

Allow the computer to restart and wait for the system to reinstall your driver automatically.

This of course may only be a temporary fix, because your graphics are really struggling to cope with a complicated game, so I recommend that you go onto the manufacturers website of your PC and look for the SUPPORT section  for example type DELL ( or whatever your make) go on to website and type in your PC make and model and look for your Graphics card driver and download and install it.

You could also increase your RAM by installing another chip, so for example if your ram is 512 megs, have another Ram chip installed of the same type and capacity so that you are running 1gig  of memory that the computer can use.

Also try closing and shutting down all your open running programs,such as your Internet browser and even pause your Anti-virus protection when playing ( always remembering to restart it again after you have finished)


The last method is to lower your InGAME settings to a lower screen resolution say 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 in the settings part of the game, this will take considerable pressure off your graphics card.

Hope that helps you
Best


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: As i'm going through your step by step, i got stuck.  I opened the device manager, the only thing i could find for displays was 'display adapters' and the only thing under that was mobile intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family.  is that what I wanna uninstall? i've included a picture of my device manager if that helps

ANSWER: Hello Brittany

Thank you very much for your follow up question, yes that is your display adapter that requires to be uninstalled,right click on it and select "uninstall", then shut down your PC and re-start. Do not worry, windows will recognise it immediately and re-load drivers for it, which acts as a clean install for the video chip.
This of course is only the part fix, and you should also follow the advice of minimal open programs such as anti-virus and internet browsers.
Best

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: So I did as u suggested and it wnt reinstalll the driver. It said it wasn't able to.

Answer
Hello Brittany
OK go to this link, insert your operating system Win 7, Vista,XP etc.and look for the graphics driver that you require for the Intel(r) 945 chipset
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Chipset
This will give you the LATEST DRIVERS to download and install.


HOWEVER BEFORE YOU DO THIS !!

On the link below is an automated Intel support search and find drivers for your PC. Please run this first and it should find and download the correct driver for your chipset automatically and will save some time.

http://www.intel.com/support/detect.htm?iid=dc_iduu

Best