Having Graphic card issues on The Sims 3!

Okay, so I am new to posting on forums so bare with me here. :$:  My Sims 3 game started crashing to the desktop a couple of weeks ago and I have been trying to fix the problem ever since. I opened up The Sims 3 Crash Analyzer and it gave me this error message:
Warning: Graphic Devices not found in database Intel R (HD) Graphics. I have looked on Mod The Sims on how to fix this but I do not understand what to do. I'm not very tech savvy unfortunately. If someone could please give me a step by step process on how to get The Sims 3 to recognize your graphic card that would be great. Thanks in advance.

Yes, I have used this site before. It said my specs were fine to run The Sims 3 and it's expansions.

//EDIT

I just tried it again to be sure and the Lab Detection said I meet the minimum requirements.

My first thought is to reinstall your vid drivers; they, or their registry entries, could be corrupt.

For a truly clean reinstall of vid drivers this rather convoluted procedure was recommended on the Alienware site a few years ago, it has worked for me more than once.
- From Device Manager uninstall the vid drivers
- From "Programs and Features" uninstall any listings of Microsoft Visual C++ (there may be one or several)
- Restart in Safe Mode
- Run DriverSweeper (http://www.guru3d.com/content-page/guru3d-driver-sweeper.html) to remove all traces of the driver files
- Run CCleaner (http://www.piriform.com/) to scan the registry for orphan vid card driver entries, remove any found (this step is optional, the new versions of DriverSweeper should do this, but it doesn't hurt)
- Restart in normal mode
- Install the vid drivers
- After windows restarts, check "Programs and Features" for Microsoft Visual C++ entries; doesn't matter how many are present as long as there is at least one. If there are none, manually initiate a windows update then check again (most driver packages install these but some do not).

I first ran into this issue when my vid card would not go into 3D mode. Some games would run, but with completely horrible frame rates and poor graphics, others wouldn't even load, complaining of "no compatible video hardware". Reinstalling vid drivers (always the first concern) didn't help, nor did physically removing and reinserting the vid card; the above procedure put everything back to normal.

Thank you for all the replys guys!   I have a hp15rwm laptop. My chip type just says Intel(R) HD Graphics. I have tried to understand how to do that simswiki info site, but I really don't get how to do that kind of stuff. 

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I didn't have a problem with my intel graphics driver until a few weeks ago. Everything was working just fine before.


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So jgf, you said I have to uninstall my video driver in the programs list? Is it going to be safe for my pc to uninstall an integrated driver? And how will I re-install the driver if I do decide to follow through with your idea?

You uninstall the drivers via Device Manager, then uninstall the Visual C++ via programs. This will do no damage, windows will restart with a generic windows vid driver - no 3D capability, low-res and low color desktop.

To reinstall, in your case go to the HP site (http://www8.hp.com/us/en/support.html, if not in the US select the proper country there) and input the model of your computer ...btw, hp15rwm did not show as a valid model number. You will probably want to do this before uninstalling the old ones, just because it will make going online easier. The download is typically a single .exe file, save it to the desktop and run it when you are ready to reinstall; it's automatic after that. You may need to reset your desktop settings (resolution and color depth) after windows restarts.

But, as Carlos pointed out, integrated video is not designed for high performance; its worst issue is that there is no dedicated video RAM, system RAM is shared with video. With resource intensive games, such as Sims 3, there could be massive page file use, which slows the system to a crawl (if not crashing the program).

My model is hp15 r-029wm. It is part of the hp 15-r000 Notebook Pc series. I'm aware that my integrated graphic driver doesn't work well with The Sims 3. I don't know how to change from an integrated driver to a dedicated. Like I said before, I'm not very tech savvy. But, the game was working perfectly fine before it started having this problem a few weeks ago. I will try your idea though so thank you for replying back and helping.

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I decided to go with your plan jnf. I did everything you told me to do. Although when I looked into Control panel I did not find any Visual C++ via programs. I updated Windows too.. 

You would need a dedicated card, not drivers. Simplistically, consider drivers as translators; your OS (windows) speaks its own language, your video system, speakers, keyboard, printer, etc., each speaks its own language, the drivers allow the OS to communicate with everything else. There will be numerous entries in the registry describing all this to windows, a simple "hiccup" in the system can corrupt anything in this chain, things will still basically work but some instructions "get lost in the translation". That is why drivers are usually suspect when something doesn't work quite right; and occasionally just reinstalling the drivers doesn't help because traces of the previous install - containing the corruption - may remain, so after reinstalling there is no improvement.

When you start a game which requires certain video functions to run properly, it queries windows, hence the registry, to check that those functions are available; if it does not get the correct response, it crashes.

With a laptop you are limited to whatever you got when you selected that model; your only option for improved graphics performance (other than a new computer) is getting an external adapter and another monitor (many people do this to enjoy gaming on a larger monitor at home).

I'm not sure to what database your error message refers, but if a clean driver install doesn't help that leads me to another option. In the Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 folder is DeviceConfig.log, this contains data about your system, graphics, personal game settings, etc.; it may still contain erroneous data from the registry. Drag this file out of that folder (to the desktop is fine) and start the game, it should rebuild that file, including reading the data on your graphics system again. If the game now starts fine, exit, go to the old file and copy everything from ==Options== on down and paste that into the new file OVER the corresponding entries; this will reinstate all your personal settings without you having to go through all the menus manually.

Okay, thanks so much for your help. Found the Microsoft Visual C ++ programs on the Microsoft site. I will try your plan on taking out the DeviceConfig.log out of the Sims 3 folder and start up Sims 3 and get back to you if the game starts up fine. 

"... look inside the DeviceConfig.log file that jgf mentioned, before you delete it. ...?"

Note, I did not say delete the file but merely move it out of the folder so it would be rebuilt after the drivers were reinstalled.
(FTR, my habit for editing .cfg and .ini files - or anything similar - is to right-click the file and select "add to zip". This creates an archived file in the same folder; I can now edit to my heart's content, or even delete the file, and if anything goes wrong merely right-click on that zip file and select 'extract here", allow the overwrite, and I am back where I started.)

I make no claims to being a computer guru (it is testament to the lack of such knowledge by my neighbors that i am considered such in this high-rise), but driver removal/installation is a relatively straightforward procedure which is easy to talk someone through, and chances of anything going drastically awry are minimal.

Sorry for the wait guys, I've been busy at my job recently. Okay, so I've tried what jgf required me to do. My Sims 3 game has been starting up fine. There have been nothing but a small Custom content crash since I uninstalled and re-installed my driver but I fixed said crash by removing the custom content that I just downloaded.  Other then that, my game has been working fine. Thank you for taking the time to help me out of that sticky situation. Happy Simming!