Spore (PC game) crashes in space stage?

Guys help. :)

I have spore (it's pirated, my friend only lent me.)

But he said it was fully functional, until I found something.



In creature stage, the game constantly crashes every 30-40 minutes, so i need to save and quit and re-open it. I just took the annoyance off my mind and reached space stage...



another crash.



When I have completed all the commander's basic missions, then next the commander asked me what missions I'd like.

I chose to terraform, and then the message goes on and on.



I then flew to an uncharted planet then the problem starts. The screen flickers big black triangles (the 1st point of the triangle is at the most top-left corner of the screen, 2nd is at the lower left, then the 3rd is at the center.). (This problem started from the creature stage up to the space stage. FYI) Then after several flickers of those triangles, the game freezes (it doesn't even return to the desktop! sh*t!)

I then have to unplug the computer because I can't even get the mouse and keyboard running.

Then when I start Spore again it just continues on and on and on. Irritating! i can't do the usual routing of save-quit-reopen because it immediately crashes when I land on the uncharted planet. It also requires saving in the solar system, not the planet.



Please help!

More details if you like:

Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Intel Pentium 4 (Processor 524)

ATI radeon xpress 200



Please don't tell me the following:

1.) Reinstall without EA Download Manager (already did that)

2.) Disable Internet (Already did that too)

3.) Upgrade graphics driver blah (still doing that)

4.) Trash the game because it's useless (NO IT'S NOT!)



One more thing:

I can't download the patch. I'm not sure if it'll destroy my pirated game. Although if you can say i can, give me proof. thanks! :D (am i demanding?)



Thanks in advance! :)Spore (PC game) crashes in space stage?
Ive had that exact thing happen in the space stage, its not the processing speed or ram...its the video card. to fix this problem you will need to get a new one. They can be very expensive, but You can get a really nice one off ebay for a really good price. Another thing that you can do is change the graphical quality on the game... to do this- open spore, go to options, and change all of the qualities to low. Downloading patches wont do anything, ive tried it.