Why is my game suddenly a PITA?

[catangi]

I don't know if you can actually help me, but I'm hoping that someone has heard something that could give me a clue...

The frustrating problem I'm having now is that I can't figure out a pattern to the problem, which makes diagnosing it hard.

I'm running Mac OS 10.6.6. I've been using custom content - sims3packs and package files - without any trouble until a few weeks ago. Then sims3packs stopped installing. Or uninstalling. I deleted my caches, then deleted my .dbc caches, and then ended up reinstalling the game all over again.

I started adding back my content, slowly, making sure that it all was compatible. I started by adding the sims3packs. The game worked fine after adding all of them. Then I started to add the packages. Then it stopped working again!

To make a long story short, this is my problem: It seems like I'm having a problem with custom content but it's not tied to any particular piece of CC. It seems to be something to do with the packages, but since it's ONLY a problem when I have both sims3packs and packages installed, I can't be 100% sure.

I've cleared my custom content and caches multiple times, and each time, the problem seems to crop up no matter what content I add first. It doesn't seem to be at a certain number of packages, although it doesn't break until I've added more than a handful. The old "add back by halfs" trick doesn't help me narrow down what's going on.

Any ideas, at all, at what might be going on? I know it's a long shot. Right now I'm reinstalling again, and I'm going to try adding back five at a time... which will take forever.

[Persian]

I had the exact same problem. The launcher would completely lock up and my game followed after......After MANY hours of reading I figured out that I had gotten a bad patch install. I completely uninstalled everything following the instructions I found on this site and am atm in the process of reinstalling all my CC. So far it seems to be going well. Will post again if the launcher locks back up.

*Edit* Just so you know....I tried everything to keep from reinstalling. Deleting files....letting the game give me a new Sims 3 folder......everything imaginable. Only thing that seemed to work was to reinstall and manually install the patches.

TY guys for all the good information you have on the site!

[catangi]

I'm don't think that this is my problem, unfortunately.

I completely forgot to put some important info in my post, I was so frustrated:

My problem started BEFORE I updated to 1.31/1.32, but AFTER I had been using 1.29 for a while. I thought at first it was from trying to install a piece of corrupted/bad cc, but then it kept happening even after I got rid of the cc I had been trying to install.

I haven't even been getting the same errors. I got a black/frozen installation screen for a while, then I got "service initialization failed." Then I realized that if I removed my mods folder while installing sims3packs, it would work. But I couldn't figure out what package file in my mods folder could be causing the problem because it seems random. I decided to worry about it later, but then I tried to install some sims3packs and a few more packages today. The sims3packs installed fine, but the game started to freeze on the black screen. So now I am going to try for the third time with a totally clean install to hope I come across something that gives me a clue.

It's like it just suddenly decided to crazy.

[Persian]

You could try Delphy's Dashboard tool. That will show you if you have bad CC installed.