Sims 3 keeps crashing on brand new laptop with graphics card

I just recently (5 days ago) got a new windows 8 laptop for christmas and I wanted to run sims 3 on it. Previously I owned a laptop (windows 7) with sims 2 installed, and it worked fine, because I made sure it had a dedicated graphics card. So when I got this for christmas, I made sure it had a dedicated graphics card too so I could play Sims 3. However, I've barely even played sims 3 for 10 minutes without it crashing into a black screen with no other way of getting out of it but to hold the power button down on my pc until it shuts down, or it either displays a blue screen with things like DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION or DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_OR_LESS etc. and restarts. Its so upsetting! I've tried almost everthing. Sorry for such a spontaneous message. If this helps, when i first installed the game a message game up saying that my game doesn't regonize the graphics card.

By the way, my PC specs are:

Windows 8.1

Intel® Core™ i5-4210U Processor

Memory: 8 GB

Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 840M

Hard Drive: 1TB

Please help its ruined my christmas