whats wrong with my Simcity4 rush hour?

[oh man!]

hello..can anyone help me?

i'm new here..and i have some problems with my game..

when i load my simcity4 rush hour, it says, "could not initiate directdraw".then it loads a black screen but i could still hear sound..how is this possible?

i have directX 9 and am using a radeon 9000 graphic card.i just updated my drivers yesterday as well..

also i have seen a previous thread that advises changing a certain property from drawing from the card to software rendering.Help! I do not understand what software rendering is and how to change the settings. also does anyone know what "anti aliasing" is? another thread said that changing this to default may solve my problem, and directdraw too, but i don't even know all these confounding terms...:cry:

 

[LordOfLA]

Anti-Aliasing is a means of smoothing object edges by drawing things at a higher resolution than that of which you have your screen configured and then resized back down to your screen size. There's a bit more to it but that's the main gist of things.

DirectDraw is the name given to the microsoft software that lets you play 2D Sprite based games such as simcity 4. Errors with this usually mean that there is an issue with directx and or your radeon drivers.

You can get the directx installer at http://www.microsoft.com/directx this will update/fix any issues with directx.

If doing so does not fix your problem let us know.