Same issue for me
3 days ago my new Alienware 17 arrived. I had some issues off the bat with Origin trying to download The Sims 3 but i solved that issue. The current problem is when the game is being played. The game will freeze and a notification on the desktop will say..
"Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered: display drivers Intel HD graphics drivers for windows 8 (R) stopped responding and has successfully recovered"
This notification will pop up a few times (about 8) and the game will continue to play until another one does saying...
"Application has been blocked from accessing Graphics hardware: Application TS3W.exe has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware."
I have uninstalled and reinstalled all the current drivers. Its operating on windows 8. And i have an HQ mod for The Sims 3 for higher quality Sim detail definition. I do noticed the game crashing with this mod but not as badly as the previous hq mode i Intel's support page is currently down so i can't get any help from them... I tried running in comparability mode and that seems to just prolong the process of the game from crashing. Meaning i get more of the first notifications listed above before the game crashes out. I'm at a loss and any help would be great!