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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 15th Apr 2018 at 11:54 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Showtime, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise, Into the Future
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M not recognized - Device 0 error upon launch
Yesterday my game crashed for an unknown reason and today, when trying to restart, it greeted me with a "Device 0: Cannot run this title. No supported graphics card detected" error. I've checked the drivers and they are updated, and when I switch to the integrated card, which is an Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600, the game boots up and works without any problems. Searching for a way to fix this, I came across the related article in the Sims Wiki (http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...ed_by_the_game), as well as other threads on various forums about similar cases (like http://games4theworld.bestgoo.com/t...rd-not-detected and http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=607093): I tried to edit the GraphicCards.sgr and GraphicRules.sgr files accordingly, ran the game in windowed mode, used NvidiaProfileInspector to cap the framerate at 60fps, but all the methods and combinations I tried didn't work at all, and it doesn't help that my DeviceConfig.log is completely empty, leaving me no clue about where I could have done something wrong. I have all the expansions and stuff packs except for Movie Stuff, and the game is patched up to 1.67.

My DxDiag shows this (some info are in Italian, though):


I had already come across this problem in the past, but I forgot how I managed to fix it, and as I said all the methods I tried to use now didn't seem to work. Can someone help me?
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Mad Poster
#3 Old 16th Apr 2018 at 6:38 AM
In addition to what we all now affectionately call Nitromon's Method (or something like that) for formal card recognition, if you have not already done so you will want to use the Nvidia Control Panel to set up a profile for TS3. Use TS3.exe for Patch 1.69, TS3w.exe (with the "w") for 1.67 and below. In addition to vsync, you will want to set the graphics to "High Performance." If that doesn't work, then try "AutoSelect Nvidia GPU." There something about these dual graphics setups involving the 950Ms that's a bit more resistant to the handoff between the Intel chip and the Nvidia card that kicks up the Device 0 error and no graphics card at all being used, thus the game for that session won't start.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#4 Old 16th Apr 2018 at 5:18 PM
It worked! I had already came across Nitromon's method during my research on the matter yesterday, before posting here, but I mistakenly had assumed that changing only the Device name and nothing else wouldn't have had any effect on fixing the error, persuaded as I was that I needed to add strings in both of the .sgr files. Glad to know I was wrong. Thanks a lot!

I had already set up the NVidia Control Panel with the TS3W.exe back when the game still worked, but only to make sure it would have ran with the NVidia card instead of the integrated one. Aside from that I didn't touch the settings, so I don't know how they work exactly. I've set the High Performance setting just now, but which option should I choose for the vsync? (It is using the global setting at the moment)
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 18th Apr 2018 at 12:12 AM Last edited by Julius VII : 18th Apr 2018 at 2:00 AM.
Unbelievable, I tried to start the game today and the error showed up again, and the device number of my card is still in the GraphicsCards.sgr! What could have happened? Yesterday when the game worked I could play for as long as I wanted and it didn't crash or give me any problems at all...

EDIT: Simply restarting my pc seemed to do the trick (for now). The fact that the game has all these kinds of errors and it's never 100% sure what causes and what fixes them is very annoying. I wish people at EA cared about creating more stable products, or at least providing the help needed to face these problems, instead of acting unbothered and leaving the players to work those out completely on their own.

Again, thanks for the help.
Instructor
#7 Old 19th Apr 2018 at 11:24 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I'm not sure if this is related, but my 650m sometimes "shuts off" or become disabled, requiring me to reboot the system. It happens randomly sometimes when I use chrome/MSIE, which seems to be the culprit.


If you still using Windows 7 you might need to check if there's malware or bloatware that you don't realize having it, it's time to move on with Win 10, even my GTX680 is not enough for Forza Horizon 3 I'm currently playing as its required to have 4 GB VRAM at least lol, glad I finally sold it online today and still gets 50% of its price from when I bought it 5 yrs ago, but now I can't afford to get the GTX1080 lol, well maybe GTX1050 is not bad for its replacement
Mad Poster
#9 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 8:22 PM Last edited by igazor : 20th Apr 2018 at 9:06 PM.
As it so happens, there was a player on the EA forums the other day with almost exactly this problem except with a 940M in dual instead of a 950M. Went through all the usual steps but nope, we couldn't stop the Intel chip from taking over and refusing to let go when their game launched without the game refusing to launch at all; DeviceConfig was blank unless the Intel was running the game. Took two of us a day and a half via PMs with all the usual suggestions and a few less than usual ones before the player discovered the problem was that they had used $ characters in their user profile name; they changed that up and the handoff to the Nvidia card magically started working. Although the other steps we took them through including driver updates and formal card recognition probably still would have been required.

Never thought to ask about unusual Win user account/profile name characters, but after all that it's certainly on the list to ask about now.
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