Vista - sims 2 crashing

Alright, so I know I have all the updated drivers for my audio and video.
I know Sims 2 can work on my laptop.
I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop.
I have an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5800 @ 2.00GHz 2.00 Ghz
3GB RAM.
32 Bit OS.

(anything else you need to know?)

I'll open Sims 2, loads fast. I click on a neighborhood, and the trees are white and have words on them, like coding. I go to make a family, the brick isn't showing up either. It's white with the words too. Things work for a few seconds, then a message pops up and says "Application has crashed. The application will now terminate." I click OK, and it closes.

I've tried installing and uninstalling. I've downloaded and installed the patches, nothing seems to work.

Anybody have ANY idea how to fix this? I would greatly appreciate ANY help.

Try running with windows xp compatibility.

It didn't work. It still crashed. The trees are still white, so are the walls.
I tried Windows 2000 too. Same result.

After it crashes, what comes up in your Problems Reports and Solutions section?
(In the Control Panel).

It says "Go online to the following website to download an update that solves this problem". And I've already downloaded the patch for it.

After a little bit of research on this problem, I managed to find that there were two cases where Inspiron 1525 gave graphical errors in the neighborhood view. Though neither of them quite as severe as you describe, both problems were related to the onboard graphics of the laptop. I hate to have to say it, but I'm afraid your laptop was not meant to play the Sims 2, due to your onboard graphics, which appears to have only been intended for everyday computer use, like browsing the internet.

If you do wish to attempt to play the game, albeit with drastically low performance, you may wish to follow this guide, though the recommended course of action would be to buy a new computer... which is hardly reasonable:

http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Onboard_Graphics

Other problem involving Inspiron 1525 and graphics:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=309306