Sims 2 only runs in 800x600 resolution

I can't get the resolution any higher than 800x600 in Sims 2, even WITH expansions.

I've tried playing a bit before I installed Windows Updates and it worked fine, but it was right after I installed .NET Framework 4 updates and Internet Explorer 10 that it put me at those "weak" settings.

And I tried playing with the Graphics Rules.sgr file as with other suggestions when I looked around, and that didn't work. Some may suggest that my APU or the integrated graphics isn't supported.

CPU: AMD A4-5300 APU With Radeon Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 7480D IGD
Share memory has been set to 2 GB - Was 512 MB; Can be reverted
16 GB Main Memory
AMD Catalyst version 13.4

Apparently, I'm not joking around.

Hi.
Find the file:

C:/Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2/TSData/Res/Config/Graphics Rules.sgr

… and make a copy of it under a different name as a backup (something like Graphics Rules.sgr.bak)

Now edit the original file and find the section:

“option ScreenModeResolution”

You will see settings for Low, Medium, and High. Copy the medium settings and paste them over the low settings to allow the game to start at 1024×768 resolution or better.

Save and exit and then start the game to see if it works.

As I said before, I did that hack and I only got options to change the screen resolution. That was it. The options to change the View Distance, Special Event Camera, Smooth Edges, etc. can't be changed unless some texture memory is seen by the game. Every other time I've started the game, it doesn't find any, and sets the texture memory size to 32MB, yet when I run DXDiag (32bit and 64bit) it reports it as 4095MB and 712MB, respectively. Seems as though Windows Update is changing the way older games work with Direct3D texture memory mapping. What I simply did was force the size of the memory being shared in BIOS for seti textureMemory in Graphics Rules.sgr, in the case of no texture memory found, like this:

Code:

if (not $useSoftwareRasterizer)
   # failed to obtain device texture memory size, force to 32MB
   if ($textureMemory = 0)
      seti textureMemory       2047
      setb textureMemorySizeOK false
   endif

The size may get changed once I put my BIOS' share memory size down.

Guess what! New graphics card and yet again Sims 2 does not see my 1GB GDDR5 memory on my Radeon R7 250 graphics card.