Why does the sims 3 game keep crashing?

Answer 1

I recently installed The Sims 3 onto my new laptop, and it was working fine until yesterday. After about half an hour of playing on it, the screen went black and then started to flicker between the desktop and the Sims game itself. Sometimes it goes back to the game and I can continue as usual, but most of the time the screen just then stays black and I can't do anything, so I have to turn it off at the power button and restart it. Since today, it does this about 5 minutes after I have started the game. I have tried using the backup version and looking at the DXDIAG thing, but nothing is working at the moment. Please help me, it's really frustrating!

I was also wondering if it was to do with any houses or people I may have downloaded off of the Sims 3 website, as it a few hours after I had downloaded things from there. Would this be the case though, as I thought the Sims 3 site was safe?