We all love this game to death (well, most of us) and it gives us many an hour of enjoyment. But we also all know the dark side of the coin. The corruption, the glitches, the crashes, the broken CC. When all we want to do is play, but something is keeping us from doing so, and we end up spending hours and hours on trying to figure out what's wrong. Normally we get to play at the end of it, and it's all worth it. But man, sometimes this game really drives me nuts.

And today, I feel the need to share that nuts with you. Because I'm approaching that part of simming where I want to take my cds and throw them out a window, and format my computer. I won't, because I'm sentimental and overly attached to my pixels, but man I wish I could cure myself of the sim-mania right now. Those of you that have been around for ever may recall that my hood went unplayable, crashing at basically anything. I set out to rebuild my hood from scratch, replicating every memory of every main Sim for the past three generations.

Next month it'll be two years since I set out on that mission to rebuild my hood and get back to my story. It's been long, it's been frustrating. I had to scrap two hoods and start over again, because they went corrupt. One I was up to the third generation as children, the second I can't recall. But, I powered through, I wanted to get to my hood. And so I'm on hood 4.0 right now, and generation three graduated college. I'm about three seasons away from being back to where I was with my story. Oh so close to the end.

And I'm back at square one. My game crashes constantly. It takes 4-5 tries to enter a lot, because the first four instantly crash. If I get in, I might get to play a sim day or so, but quite often it'll find something to crash over while playing instead. It's following the same patterns as before. It's like my game wants to protect me from having fun and seeing what happens to my characters. I've done EVERYTHING to make it stop. I've googled, I've researched, I've tested. I've cleaned out downloads to reduce amount. It doesn't matter. It just plain hates me. Whether or not it's corrupt in the same was the old one, I don't know. I have no idea what to make of it, and right now I'm too tired of trying to figure it out to even try.

So, that's where I'm at. I spent two years to get my story back, only to end up with the exact same problem I had back then. Hooray! I'm sure my stubborn will come back eventually, and I'll attempt rebuild number five billion, but I guess we'll see.

What has your game done that drives you nuts? Does it hate you too? Please tell me I'm not the only one.

Disclaimer: I'm not looking for help to solve it, so let's keep any technical stuff related to my situation out of here. If you happen to have magic knowledge regarding crashes, you're welcome to PM me, but this isn't intended as a help thread, but a discussion about those times when the game just doesn't want to be nice.

The only time I felt like that was when I actually had too much CC for my computer to handle and so everytime I'd go into play something was wrong, CC wasn't showing up or the Tv channels would have an 'X' through them and I spent more time trying to figure out what was wrong than playing. I eventually just got a computer with more memory and everything went back to normal. Sorry to hear you have such difficulty with your hoods, I know if my hood did that I'd feel like throwing my computer out the window - I have had the same neighborhood since 2007 so it will be a sad day indeed whenever the game implodes it.

My main game crashes and I think it's simply too much for it to handle. The large lots, the cc. If I play my school it lags badly and I save often as I know I am not likely to get through the rotation without it crashing. Large apartments also seem to crash when the snow appears or someone goes from normal to frozen, changes like that. More RAM has helped somewhat as has turning off neigbours and shadows. I think it just needs more juice for what I am wanting it to do as smaller lots hardly ever crash.

If/when you rebuild cheat it up to where you are instead of playing.

I have been cheating quite extensively jo, but replicating everything in the right order takes time. Mostly because of memories that affect more than the active sim, like getting married or graduating. It ends up being a lot to keep track of, and keeping in sync. I also added a bit of new stuff to the story that I played for fun, when I needed a break from the constant keeping track and just cheating things back to where they were, so that added to the time it's taken.

But, if I do find the motivation to rebuild, I'll definitely cut down. I can't play this bloody story again, I'm sick of it. I'll definitely completely cut out memories of gen 1 and 2, and possibly simplify gen 3 to the very basics. It would still take for-effing ever to set up all the Sims and houses yet again, but on the bright side all that work townifying content might actually show since I'd get new townies.

For now I think I'll keep cleaning out my downloads, so that if I start again, it'll be with less stuff, and hopefully less strain. I've always suspected my crashes have more to do with strain than it does corruption, but I can't think of how to fix it because my PC is already beast. It's speccs are way above what Sims 2 needs, which makes me suspect it's some kind of hardware incompatibility. So... rebuilding might be completely pointless, but the hood did run smooth up until graduation of third gen, so I don't know what to think. Either way can't hurt to reduce strain by having less CC.

gummilutt, have you got the college adjuster? You can set final exam in two hours with that.

Maybe it's time to forget it all and start of fresh.

I agree with Jo - sounds like a fresh start is in order.

Starting over is only fun when your heart is in it. Repeatedly starting over due to game issues, seems like it would be downright irritating.

I wish you much luck with your game.

Start fresh? What is this madness you speak of Jokes aside, my story is Sims, to me. It's not fun if it's not those characters. The way I play doesn't easily transfer to new Sims, or new ideas, so it's very much a "It's them or it's not at all"-kind of deal, which is why it's so frustrating that it keeps exploding on me. I'll take a break, and wait for motivation to return.

I don't have the college adjustor jo, but I have insim which has a school editor that lets you do the same thing. Nobody earns anything that can be earned via mods, in terms of skills, badges or grades. Nobody eats, sleeps or does any of that. Except for gen three that I wanted to learn some behaviors, since I'm starting to use free will on from time to time.

Sorry to hear about your problems Chax. That sucks! Maybe in a future computers will be less cranky and hate people a bit less :P

Luckily I haven't had to deal with crashes or clashing CC since I have removed almost all CC from my game. It is less fun this way since I am stuck with just Maxis clothes and hair, but at the same time more fun since it is a lot faster to load lots and the game itself. But I know I used to have a horrible time with certain sims randomly resetting every time the cursor moved over them when they were selected. I have no idea why it happened, and I couldn't find out any connection between the sims that it happened to but it drove me crazy.

Another thing that used to bother me was when OFB just came out and my sister bought it for her computer. I would go to her house and work for an hour to build a shop to look just the way I wanted it and as soon as I would get done the game would crash and I would lose everything. I would get so mad that I would just say forget it and stop playing.

I must be incredibly lucky, because in all the time I've been playing TS2 (which is since it first came out) I have rarely had problems. My game crashed once, a couple of years back, which was due to a dodgy download, and a binary search flushed that one out pretty quick. I also had an effed-up lot one time, but bulldozing that sorted that out. I have reinstalled exactly once in the past ten years, and that was only because I transferred my game to my new computer. I sympathise with all of you who have had problems, it must suck enormously, and I hope you get things sorted soon.

Aaaand now I've probably just jinxed myself.

I'm a little confused as to why you need to start from the beginning each time. Make backups, lots of backups! Then you only need to go back to where the problems started and you don't lose everything.



They'll be sentient and have killed all humans and play the sims themselves.

I feel for you. This sounds like a pain in the butt. I admire you for trying so much and giving it so much time. I would have given up a long time ago and just started over with different sims and such. If the back-up solution would not work out either, that is.
I also admit I don't have the patience for such a big project of recreating everything again exactly how it was before it all went hay wire.
And if my game has 'small things' that would make other simmers run to modthesims to ask how to solve it, I can usually accept it as part of things as long as I can play along.
For example: since I wiped the computer clean, reïnstalled windows 7 to start fresh with that, reïnstalled the Sims with my hood (back-up) and everything back in place I suddenly couldn't install family fun stuff. Like: 'Fine, have it your way. Then you're not getting installed, but I want to play and the important stuff did get installed, I'm good to go.'

One time I had to use a back-up because there was a problem with a baby I couldn't solve. Probably due to lack of knowledge and wanting a quick way to be able to play again normally. Apart from
1. some glitches due to some custom stereo stuff I downloaded and thus removed,
2. occassional crashes because I had the game already open for days on end, going back and forth between that and browsing the internet using the window button,
I think I have been pretty lucky.
Relatively little irritations or scares.
But the times there was something going on my blood pressure sure went up.

That's the opposite reaction from me. I'm: 'Fine. You won't install. I'll go back and install everything in the right order and show you!' XD

Yes, a more persistant attitude seems better to me. In my case: my will to play asap was stronger than the loss of extra items.
Up until now I do not miss those items. Due to having enough cc, is my calculated guess.
I already sort of felt lucky it was not some of the others like pets, university and open for business that didn't want to get installed.

Charity, you're quite right. And I have lots of back ups. But since I don't know what the problem is, I can't tell where it would have started, and thus don't know which one to switch to. I'm still in a bit of denial, and want to believe that if I just manage to shrink my CC-quantity by a significant amount, it'll run okay again.

The only reason I suggested a fresh start is it sounds as if the same issues are occurring over and over again.

If something that is being saved, used, saved and used again is indeed causing the corruption, it seems reinstalling the same Sims, lots, mods or CC would make it difficult to track down the problematic item(s).

However, I do understand the reluctance to start anew.

Nonetheless, I hope all of you that are experiencing any issues with your game get things sorted out. Games are supposed to give us hours of entertainment...not irritation.

I've rebuilt every lot in an empty hood, and re-make every Sim from scratch, with their appearances extracted, so that part is as new as it can be. But I think you might have a point about mods or CC. There's something that's making it come back, but what, who knows.

Joandsarah77, maxon, and anyone else who read my tale of woe with Happy Holidays... skip on by, if you like. Anyone who doesn't like teal deers ... ditto.

I installed Happy Holidays with no problem ten months or so ago. It worked wonderfully for months. Not a problem, not a burp. Not a single indication that anything could possibly happen.

After not using Santa for a while, I decided to have a nice holiday in one of my Sims households, complete with Jolly Ol' St. Nick, and I got the freaky Santa. Mine is a variation of this guy:

http://thesims2.livejournal.com/6967014.html

I got the outfit, but the head is as you see in the picture; that is, he doesn't have a face. Just the bald pate. All my hats and beards with the SP, as well as the men's Chinese outfit, is gone in the game.


What hasn't worked:

1. Anything vaguely having to do with downloads testing. No 50/50, vanilla game, etc. In fact, the game renders that freaky Santa in the link above if I pull out the Downloads folder or test vanilla. It's as if the game now thinks the Santa outfit is CC.

2, Replacing the obj. folder or the two bundle HH folders. And do not ... repeat ... do NOT try replacing the base game skins folder, which was obviously altered by HH, with a good folder (I got it from my test machine, where HH ... no ... I don't want to jinx myself.) I did that, and ALL of my HH items went "poof". Putting the old one back in at least retrieved the non-missing files. By the way, the missing game files are still there, just where they should be. They just aren't showing up in game. So freakin' frustrating! And no ... I found that removing those two bundles does NOT allow you to reinstall HH. HH is the only SP that does not have an uninstall feature. It weaves throughout your base game.

3. Cursing profusely at the game, though it does make me feel good. Googling. It appears that even more knowledgeable Simmers have absolutely no idea how to fix this easily.

It seems the only thing one can do in this case is to reinstall the game. And I wish I knew what on earth I did to get this problem. The game was working fine as of late June/early July, when I last used Santa. Reinstalling ... I wish I didn't have to, but it is what it is. But it makes me really, really nervous that this could happen without my even having the slightest idea what I did wrong. No one seems to know ... not even the "learned ones" in the Sims community. The success rate, from my Googling, of getting my stuff back seems to be at least 80%. (Fingers crossed resintalling will work.)

The only thing I can think of that I possibly did .... and this is a really, really wild guess .. was that my computer wound up with a couple of nasty bits of malware that could not be eliminated easily, and I had to resort to some pretty extreme programs to get rid of them. I'm wondering if somehow, one of the programs eliminated or corrupted a small HH file, thinking it was malware. This did happen with Sims 1 on my netbook, and I had to resintall then. One tiny EA file in that instance.

Word of warning to those who use such programs ... be very careful. At least in the case of my Sims 1 nonsense, apparently one or two of these programs think that certain EA files are malware. I have no idea if this was the case with Sims 2/HH though. I do not recall seeing any EA files or registry entries listed as having been altered. Maybe it was some seemingly-obscure file. I read that someone else got the freaky Santa after she installed a new video card, so maybe that's a clue.

This is not a help topic. Between Maxon, joandsarah77 (and thanks to both of you for trying to get this sorted!), me and Google, we have concluded that there seems to be no other solution than to reinstall. Just a story of how this game can elicit some of the greatest joy and some of the greatest use of profanity.

I know exactly how you feel. After all those years playing and you lose the game and sims you spent years playing.

My first game I played from the time I started. At first, I wasn't really interested in buying the SPs but I had all EPs. So when Best of Business came out, I was trying to get my hands on all the SPs. Even though I owned OFB it was just cheaper to buy Best of Business than to buy The Sims 2 H&M Fashion Stuff and The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff, separately. So I bought BOB. Since BOB was the newest EP, my game loaded with BOB. I had something like 15 gb of cc in my game, but it never once gave me a problem. It loaded every time I tried, never once crashed, and so on. You really get attached to those little people you invested so many hours playing.

About 2 years ago, the TS2 launcher started giving my girlfriend and myself trouble launching our games. During this time, for some reason, when we tried loading with BOB, it told us we had the wrong disc in and needed M&G. Well no big thing, we both owned it, so we started using M&G to load our games. Everything went fine for about a month, then our games started crashing again. We could uninstall and reinstall, play 5 times, then it would crash again. It was really annoying. (We are talking about 2 desktops with XP, 2 laptops with Windows 7 and 2 sets of TS2 disc, that we had problems with.) So we decided to invest in buying The Sims 2 H&M and The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath. We only needed one of each to install for both of us since we both own M&G, we also invested in 2 refurbished laptops with XP on them just to play TS2 on.

After we received the 2 SPs and the refurbished laptops, we installed all TS2 disc on them. We had saved our old games on an external hard drive, and was hoping since the last time we saved the games, we were using M&G to load, that it might of saved them in M&G. This was not the case. But we had invested so much time in these games and were so attached to those little people in them, I just could not flush them down the toilet, so to speak. They are safe in that little hard drive.

We have been playing on the refurbished laptops ever since with a fresh game, with no problems. And I have twice as much cc.

I have been reading up on UC and have read it will play both M&G and BOB saved games. So one day when I have time, I will download UC on my Windows 7 laptop and see if I can revive my old TS2 game with it's little people.

I hear you. I started playing Sims 2 in 2009. Yes I know, let for the party but my ex-girlfriend got me into the game. AND she is from England.

But yup, crashes always gave me so much troubles. Down to CD doing the Summer time. Lord, it will go crazy on my computer and over heat it to I couldn't get it to DOWNLOAD when I had Reinstall the game after a crash or corrupt CC. I didn't even know at the time what was causing all this to happen.

I have good RAM BUT bad memory. Only getting a hard drive that have 80gb. My mom got me this computer. I really want to build my computer but lack money at this time. So I do my best not to download TONZS of CC until I can get better memory like my old computer. I had to start fresh and deleted all the CC I had. And started again. But since I have UC just really wanted to start fresh. Download mods I needed first. After started with SIMS 2 CC (of sort) that came from pre orders, stores and etc...I always keep checking in case of anything.

I really miss my Alfred Jones (Hetalia) family. Never made it far. But I hope to one day bring them back and get my 10th generation....So I won't be LEAVING Sims 2 anytime soon. I still have LOTS to learn about this game that ALWAYS new to me. LOL...

I did take a year or two off from playing it. (stress and school)...want back to playing it in 2012 and how I came to this place.

I'm still learning on what to do before my computer goes flying off the window...lol..

So I sit by my desk with my cookies and ice cream and go through everything Step By Step. Listening to my pop music and see whats going on in my computer...

I am a BIG...and I mean a BIG FAN of Donnie Wahlberg of NKOTB and Blue Bloods ....I will FORGET to watch him cause of my Sims game.!!

xD

So, that's how dedicated I am of the game and wanted to work.

Whatever one does with your game, please make sure that you put the 'read only' designation on all of your installed game files. That might be a cause of corruption in many cases. Locking the files will stop most of it immediately, and the rest undoubtedly comes with CC installed.

Rusty, posts like yours are partly why my game annoys me so much. Because there are signs that it's overloaded, as it crashes extra much when it's something that requires loading a lot of stuff (phone panels, wardrobe, outfit buying, changing appearance and that kind of thing), yet I only have 5.6G of CC. On a quad core machine with 12G of RAM, and 512G hard drive. The memory card is also good. Going one-core does not change anything. There's no reason why it should be acting like I'm straining it, because I'm really not. But, alas, it does :P

Very strange that you and your girlfriend had the same problem on separate computers.

The thing is gummilutt, my girlfriend has very little cc in her game. I would say she has less than you.

I really think when we were having trouble with the launcher, it caused a problem with both our BOB cds.

That^ is probably it. I had my antivirus try and quarantine a sims 2 file once, but I noticed it and said no and another time it did quarantine a file on a really old game but I managed to get it back. Since I also had a sim baby eating antivirus program (details somewhere on my LJ) I can fully believe there are Santa eating ones. No doubt the flavour of those choc chip cookies on his suit was his undoing.

Sorry gummilutt, we've had visitors over the weekend and I've only had time to skim through this thread so far, but, if you've got lots of back-ups, I'd try restoring from a recent backup (say two weeks ago - before the crashing started anyway) and try to repeat what you've done in the last two weeks. And see if the same thing happens. If it does, try again with an older back-up. If it doesn't, you might be ok just to continue.

It's possible too that it's CC related, so it might be worth trying playing a "throw-away" 'hood just to see if the lots there crash too.

I don't think in your situation I'd have the patience to go right back and repeat the last two years rebuilding.

I do feel for you and I'm very sorry this has happened again.

There was one point where I was ready to scream because my game would keep crashing every time I tried to have my Sims help their baby to transition to toddler. I came to find out that it was caused by my hard drive failing. Mind you, this was the ONLY symptom of failure and I hadn't had any other issues before that one house, with the baby trying to age up. Or was it a pregnant sim trying to give birth... I forget exactly since it was so long ago. Long story short, what looks like a game issue, isn't always a game issue. You need to make sure to cover all your bases, especially if you have older hardware or low quality hardware.