Have you tried lowering the screen resolution?

haha unfortunately yes

I am not familiar with the this game in particular but many games have different levels of graphics performance.

Have you checked all the graphics options within the game controls?

yeah they're all at standard settings, I've tried everything I can think of

Can you play other games?

You might check out your 3D tests under DXDIAG

Hit your Windows key + R to open a Run... box then type: dxdiag

Go to the display tab and run the 3D tests.

Also you say this runs ok for some time before freezing? Is that correct?

yeah other games work great, I have Harry Potter 5 which is supposed to be pretty advanced graphically and it's flawless.

I did the scan but it said everything was fine

the game works well until I hit a certain type of screen, whenever I try to go into a house or get back to the neighborhood, or after creating a family

sims 2 vista freeze family - Google Search

I give up..it looks like everyone else with the same problem never found a solution, oh well. sims 3 comes out in a few months :]

thanks for your help!

No problem.

Let us know if we can help further.