Hi,

My game has been running fine for as long as I can remember. I have had Nightlife since it came out and no problems until last week. My computer has always been a bit tempremental and used to randomly crash.

Last Monday, I was on my computer doing other things. The computer suddenly began to crash and repeatedly crashed about 20 times. Finally managed to sort out the problems withe the computer, but since then I cannot run Nightlife.It starts and loads fine, but when I try to do anything especially CAS, it crashes and brings up the 'application has crashed' window.

I removed all my downloads, all hacks and did a complete re-install. It still crashed. Today, I did a thorough uninstall following the instructions to totally remove all file traces. I installed Sims 2, it ran fine, managed to make a family and play them for a bit. Installed Uni, it ran fine, made a CAS student, played fine.

Installed Nighlife and patched game, loaded up fine, went into neighbourhood ok, tried to place an empty lot in Downtown; crashed. Went back into game to play previously created family; crashed. I have not put any custom content back into the game. The only unusual thing is that the game loads very fast on the first screen at around 30 seconds.

I have recently done a virus check, an adware scan and a de-frag. I have a Radeon ATI 9250 and 1GB RAM with a 3 GB processor.

Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated!

Firstly, I'd try to find out the cause of your crashes. You say you've done virus and adware scans- well, I'd run some more scans just to be sure, there is some great free software out there that you can download (you can always uninstall it if you don't like it!). The four I use in conjunction are AVG, Ad-Aware, Spybot and Stinger. Another good one is A2, but you do need to register to use that one. Next, I'd run a scandisc, and then clean up the hard disc using disc cleaner. You could also try upgrading your graphics drivers- this sometimes helps, although it the fact that your PC crashes intermittently doesn't point to the drivers being the culprit. Check your fans too.

An overheated processor will force an imediate reboot. This maybe due to a faulty power supply.

Thanks for the replies!

I have downloaded the other spyware problems and will definately give them a go. I've already run Spybot and no problems there. I had one Trojan virus a few days ago that I found from my Norton. I still need to do sme more scans, re-defrag and scan disc again. I have recently cleaned out the fan for my PC and I do check (only by feeling the case) how hot it gets and it doesn't seem very hot. My PC is really compact inside and is only about 10cm wide.

A few friends have checked all the memory and harware for conflicts and haven't found anything. The crashes have got less and less over the last year. I have tried to solve that particular problem before, but with no joy. I think my drivers are up to date, I have that ATI program that has regular updates.

It really does confuse me that only Nightlife has the problem. Both the sims 2 base game and uni ran wonderfully. I will run the other spyware/checks etc and see what happens then.

Nightlife works a little differently from the base game and Uni, and played havoc with my rather elderly graphics card. The game system requirements have also gone up with this expasion. Therefore, I'd expect that your computer would need to work a little harder to render this game and make it run smoothly; hence more heat and maybe more crashes. You could always take your PC to a technician to take a look at if you're worried; sometimes an extra fan or a new power supply can work wonders. What you also have to think about is that running your components too hot can cause damage, and shorten the life of your PC.

I did another virus scan, and after downloading the AVG (sp?) it found another virus within the start up for my anti virus. I also de fragged.

Strangely, the game now seems to work! I guess maybe it was that virus. Admittedly I have only loaded it up once, but everything seems to be okay. Hopefully, it was just this stray virus.

Problem solved! (for now!)

I just joined this site. I have the same dilemma as the member above and it doesn't look bright for me. I dont play The Sims 2 but my girlfriend is addicted to it and we now have a problem. About 3 weeks ago I had to do a "system recovery" on my PC because some features werent working and my Windows folder was missing. The Sims 2 however was working fine along with Uni and Night Life. I have had my computer since March of 2005. After I did the recovery my computer was fresh again and all I had to do was install the Sims 2 along with expansion packs. Well the game plays fine for a while but then after the Night Life splash screen I get this error message "The application has crashed. The application will now terminate.". The game had played fine ever since I had my PC and now I get this error message.

I have ran multiple virus scans, used AD-Aware and Spybot. uninstalled the nvidia driver I had which were from 2004 and try both driver for XP/2000 on this site. It weird cuz the game initially plays with all of the expansion packs and then hours later it brings that error message up. This is very disheartning because my gf is sad now cause she loves playing the game and she blames me for the current problem :sorry: . I just dont get it with EA, why do the Sims have so many problems. Even the computer technictian told me that they have alot of problems with The Sims 2 series with customers. Below are my specs of my PC and my video card.

Computer: eMachine W3052, AMD Sempron(tm) 3000+
1.99 GHz 512 MB of RAM

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce4 MX Integrated GPU

I hope I can find the solution, I have recovered my PC like 30 times over the past 3 weeks. Its very frustrating considering the game played fine and crip with all the expansion packs for so many months up until I recovered it. I have also installed all the pacthes for each title from The Sims 2 site. I have tried to make my gf understand that its not the PC thats messed up, most likely the game needs something.

Here is the message I get after the Night Life Splash screen.

You could try deleting the groups.cache and cigen files from your sims2 folder in my documents... Also, I'd recommend making sure all of your virus scanners and your automatic updates are disabled whilst running the game. Check your hard disc for errors and give it a thorough clean up, I'd also recommend trying out some other virus scans- Stinger and A2 are particularly good, and AVG if you haven't tried that one already. I would disable the tea timer on spybot whilst playing though. If this fails, then try doing a clean install of the game without the patches.

I did delete the groups.cache. I'll try the disk clean though, its a shame that this game makes you go all around just to get it to work.