Vista Tutorial - The Sims 2

- What have you tried to solve the issue?
I have tried ending all back ground task and cleaning my temporary files.
- Any software update lately?
I have upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. My computer is also
relatively newly built. Before upgrading it was a Windows XP Professional and
I did not have The Sims 2 installed. However, I have successfully ran The
Sims 2 on previous XP computers I have had.
- Have you encountered a Blue Screen?
Yes. I encountered a blue screen sometimes right before the computer
reboots. The screen comes up for only second and has a message reading
atikmdag and other information.
- Have you encounter this issue before?
No.
-Additional Information
When I start up The Sims 2 the game flickers between a blank black/ purple
page. The "Maxis page" during start up is distorted. From this point a few
things have occured. Basically what happens is that the game begins to load,
quickly flashes a blank blue or purple page, stalls, flickers back and forth
between the game page and a blank blue or purple page or the game just
flickers back and forth between a blank blue or purple page. The Sims 2 music
plays in the background, but then suddenly makes an odd stuttering noise. The
computer then quickly shows a blue screen with information with some kind of
message regarding atikmdag. The computer reboots and comes to a Windows Error
Recovery page. I hit enter to have Windows start normally.

Sometimes I get as far as getting into the neigborhood with the flickering
still happening, but then the neighborhood gets distorted or a distorted
purple page appears. At the same time the stuttering noise occurs but the
computer reboots this time without the blue screen and the Windows Error
Recovery page does not appear.

If I escape out of the game before it reboots, I get a messgae on my desktop
that states the following: "Display driver stopped responding and has
recovered. Displaying driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully
recovered."