Help! Black screen when playing the Sims 3

Hi there,

I am desperate for some help on how to fix this problem. I have noticed when playing the Sims 3 that about 10 mins into the game, the screen will go black. I can still move the cursor around, music still plays and the screen isn't frozen because I have been in buy mode and was still able to click on items (which I can only hear not see). The normal game screen never returns, I always have to exit the game through ctrl alt delete and remove the game that way. It normally never does this but the past couple of days it has and now it is doing it every time. I have installed a new update for the game, but I don't think that has caused a problem. I have looked up several similar posts to try and fix the problem myself. I have updated all necessary drivers and I also went through computer settings and altered them so that the Sims 3 and all expansion packs were included in the Data Execution Prevention (DEP). I have also tried changing the graphics options in the Sims 3 game so that it isn't full screen but this does not make a difference. I really do not want to uninstall all expansion packs and start again because 1. I would lose my game and 2. it would take hours. So any advice on how to fix this problem would be greatly appreciated. I am running the game on a Toshiba laptop on Windows 7 program. My processor is Intel(R)Core(TM) i5-2410M CPU @ 2.30GHz and a 64- bit Operating System. As stated the game doesn't actually freeze, it just changes to a black screen and all I can hear is the game music and all I see is the cursor. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.