I really do apologize if this is the wrong section, but there does not seem to be an official help section for Medieval.

Anyway, after updating to the latest patch, when trying to start the game, I only get an error message: The Sims Medieval has encountered a problem and needs to close. We apologize for the inconvenience. Then, there is the send/don't send report to Microsoft buttons at the bottom.

This is with: a clean install (manually uninstalled, deleted everything from Medieval - including previous saves -reinstalled), deleting caches and thumbnails (EA's unhelpful advice).

Oh, and with my game patched up, my dvd drive will no longer read the Medieval disc. It will read every other disc I have, I have tried at least 7-8, everything from Windows to my Sims 3, to Borderlands, Duke Nukem, etc. It will read the Medieval disc if I do the manual uninstall and then reinstall and only go up to the previous patch, not the 2.0.

I do not have any sort of emulation software, no Alcohol 120, nothing like Roxio, anything like that. EA seemed to think it had something to do with DLA, but I have no such thing. I managed once, only, to get the dvd drive to read the disc by disabling the write ability, but even that is not working now.

I DO have XP Pro 64 bit, a Sony dvd drive and I KNOW this latest patch added a new version of SecuROM (8). I have had problems in the past with multiple versions of SecuROM since I have XP Pro 64. (This is not a bitch out about SecuROM, but just that it seems relevant).

Do I have to just do another uninstall and reinstall and not ever get the 2.0 patch? I will do that if I have to, I'd rather have a playable game than nonplayable, even if I like some of the things in the patch.

I'm actually a little lost here, I'm ususally the one who has minor problems with games, only ever having easily worked around or ignorable glitches.

Also, I'm trying to find out if it is going to be a waste of money to get Pirates and Nobles. It's not like I want to spend the money and then, once the game is opened and unreturnable, find out that something about it and my computer don't get along.

Oh, and if relevant, comp specs:

Quad core 2.3 Ghz
8 GB ram
140 GB free hard-drive space
nVidia GeForce GTX 460 graphics card
and the Sony produced dvd drive, which when I checked online states it supports dual layer discs (and I haven't had a problem until now with the game)

I think for now, it's best to patch up to 1.3.13. I can't even play the game on the 2.0 patch.

You've tried starting the game from the TSM.exe file (if you don't do this as standard practice) as opposed to starting through the launcher?