Hello all!

I have read several other messages in this forum about Intel's GMA 950 cards and they don't quite answer my questions.  I have recently purchased the Inspiron E1405 with Intel GMA 950 graphics and installed and played the Sims 2.  It installs perfectly fine and I can actually play it for several days/weeks before having any problems.  Whenever the problems do occur, the game freezes, shuts down, and turns my screen into a negative type display.  A pop-up message appears that says there is something wrong with the almrnt5.dll video driver.  Whenever I restart the computer, the coloring and font is fine but the wide screen display is alittle off and makes the display shorter.  After a simple system restore and downloading the new and latest drivers for the card the screen display is fixed.  I've read that the Intel GMA 950 is not a gaming video card but whenever I could play, the graphics weren't choppy or slow, only this the crash problem occurred after a week or so of playing. Is there any way to play the game without going through all that hassle?  Also my computer only came with DirectX 8.0 and I had to install the new DirectX 9.0.  I haven't tried playing the game with DirectX 9.0 yet.  It said on Intel's website that it's a 3D graphics card and even though it's integrated, there is still a PCI x 16 port inside the motherboard for updates.  I have a 1.83 Intel Core Duo processor, 1 GB memory, and a 60 GB hard drive.  The game is installed on an external hard drive that is connected through a 2.0 USB port.  Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!