Graphics Card Driver Updates

Before I begin, thanks to Vid for the advice! I will be following the steps provided and seeing what happens.

The first step in my magical adventure attempting to fix the texture problem in my game was updating the drivers on my graphics card.

My dad had to do a manual install because the internet connection on my new computer is kinda shitty (it's too far away from the router and picks up a two bar signal at best, and that's when it can connect at all) and it kept fucking up some other shit. He got that installed, and found a place where it gave optimal settings for my game. I am very happy to say that not much has changed. All of the recommended settings were at their highest, save for edge smoothing, which I had to turn from high to low. It was also recommended to turn advanced rendering off, but I never had that on in the first place, so no problems there. However, neither of these things fixed my game's texture problem.

I'm hoping to manually update my game this weekend, the next step in the plan. After doing that (regardless of the state of the grass textures in my game) I'll get that free download of Town Life Stuff. I'm also going to purchase University and Seasons while they're on sale. I will then be fully satisfied with the expansion packs in my game. I've looked at all of the other ones I don't own, and I have no interest in them. I wouldn't mind Island Paradise and Showtime, I just wouldn't use them much, so it's not worth the money. Supernatural and Into the Future are a whole other story. I do NOT want to deal with supernatural infestation problems. I find the vampires with Late Night pesky enough. I'm the type of person who prefers a more realistic game, which is also a contributing factor of my dislike of Into the Future. Another reason would be that I find the aesthetics of Into the Future to be clunky, overdone caricatures of the stereotypical Jetsons future vision. The geometric designs and the sleek steel-y look of everything really bothers me. I'd never use the items or the features. I have no more interest in seeing my sim's future than I have in seeing my own (that interest is nil, by the way). I've also heard that the thing's riddled with glitches, but I suppose we can't expect any better from EA (I guess Maxis is partially to blame now too, aren't they?).

Sorry for the delay in game pics. I've decided that before I take any more pictures, I want to fix the problem so they don't all look like shit. Hopefully things will be up and running properly again by the end of this weekend. Wish me luck!