Hooray for backups!

I just looked through my backups, and it seems that I didn't lose all my sim photos, afterall. *insert huge grin here* I'm so glad that I've been backing up my files regularly (I recently bought an external hard drive to make it impossibly easy to do so, so I'd have no excuse). The whole Sims 2 folder was there, but it only contained personal data files, so that doesn't help me with the downloads (those folders only have some of the read-me files and images), but the storytelling folder had all of the image files intact. Hooray!

( To celebrate, here's a little sneak peak at one of those Frances shots. )

... and after all that installing, the game won't run.

Okay, I'm not going to freak out just yet, but when I click on the FT icon, I get this message:

Failed to enumerate any DirectX 9 compatible adapters in the system! (I just love the playful exclaimation point there. *eye roll*)

Please make sure you have a DirectX 9 compatible graphics adapter and have installed the latest manufacturer provided driver.

The application will now terminate.

By graphics adapter, they're referring to my graphics card, right? (Or am I way off?) That shouldn't have changed, since my card is still in there, and I did download the latest driver. Now, the computer has been reset to square one, and this graphics card was added later, so I wonder if I need to change the settings so it's recognized, maybe. I have no idea what I need to do. I'm also using a no-cd crack to avoid SecurRom, so I wonder if that's the problem. Ugh. I guess I need to do some research here, or make another tech. call.

If anyone has any advice, I would greatly appreciate it.