Hey guys. This is a recent development for me. My game is has been working just fine but it froze the other night after my sim returned from a nightclub. No big deal. I restarted, and now my game is unplayable. I can get it to start up, the movie will play (or I can click to skip, usual stuff). The loading screen begins and everything appears normal, until it gets about 95% loaded. At this point, about the same spot every time, game crashes. I haven't downloaded any new mods or cc in quite a while, so I don't think it's that. I've been running on Windows 10 the entire time, so I wouldn't think it would be that. I attempted to repair the game in Origin but that doesn't seem to work (it actually froze during that process as well...I'm trying again). I've searched the forums but haven't seen anyone talking about this specific problem. Please help!
EDIT: I have tried several times now to repair in Origin. It gets to 100% and then I get a "failed to download" error. I do not understand.

Did you delete the cache files?

I did. Still crashing at the same point.

Does it crash if you run it without mods/cc? An easy thing to do is to take out your The Sims 2 folder from Documents and then run the game and let it regenerate all its files. Then enter one of the Maxis neighborhoods (you'll have fresh copies) and playing a bit to see if the game crashes or not. If it doesn't crash with a freshly-generated The Sims 2 folder and without mods/cc installed, then you'll know that your game is working properly and something in your downloads (or in one of the other folders; it could be that your neighborhood became corrupted because of the freeze or that corruption caused the freeze) is causing the problem. Even though you haven't added anything, it's possible that something got screwed up when your game froze and you had to shut it down (I assume) manually, by stopping the process or by turning off your computer. That's always a good first step, after deleting caches. That way you'll know where to begin your troubleshooting.

Well now, that worked! Deleted cache, ran the game vanilla and it started right up. What's the next step? Do I have to do the 50/50 thing to narrow it down to a specific file? That's always the point where I berate myself for my cc addiction.

First sort by date and remove anything new.

Thanks so much everybody. I will try to sort through my files tomorrow and see what that does. I really appreciate the help. Does anyone know why this may have happened so randomly or is it just one of those things?

I doubt that anyone will be able to tell you for certain, but I'm going to hazard a guess that something is wrong with that particular neighborhood, possibly as a result of the freeze you experienced. Or it could be that something was wrong with the neighborhood which in turn caused the freeze. I'm guessing this because you said that you hadn't added any new mods/CC lately.

Before you go to the effort of 50/50ing when it might not be your CC that's causing the problem, it would be good, I think, to test just that neighborhood folder. To do that, first go to the Neighborhoods subfolder of the "The Sims 2" folder you just generated to test your game. Delete all the neighborhood folders that are there. Then, make a copy your real neighborhood's folder from the "The Sims 2" folder that you had removed in order to regenerate that folder and then paste it into the Neighborhoods folder of the newly-generated "The Sims 2" folder. Then, fire up the game and see if the game loads and see if the neighborhood shows in the neighborhood selection screen. If it does, see if it will load. If it loads, go in and play around in it a bit. (It'll look terrible because you won't have your CC in there, but you're just testing, so who cares how it looks? ) Load and test-play a bunch of lots (all of them, if it's a small hood.) Go into build mode in some of them and make sure you can bring up the build/buy menus. Scroll all the way through each menu. See if it crashes and if it does, note what you were doing and on what lot you were on when it crashed. If it doesn't crash anywhere, then it's likely something in your mods/CC that's causing the issue and you'll need to do a 50/50 to find it. That said, it's also possible that some other files in some other folders got screwed up and is causing the crashing, but if it's not something in the neighborhood folder itself that's screwy, I'm going to bet its mod/CC-related. But at least testing a copy of the neighborhood is a little faster than running a 50/50, so you might as well confirm or eliminate that first.

It could just be that the game ripped a piece of CC - it does do that sometimes. Annoying but not generally a problem as long as you can find it.