I've had my game about 6 months and as far as I know everything has worked perfectly until a few weeks ago the screen started going black for a minute or two and then righting itself during gameplay. These "half-crashes" continued for a while, and got progessively more frequent. Once or twice, the mouse and screen seemed to loose calibration as soon as I opened it up. Now, when the screen goes black, my whole computer crashes and restarts. Sometimes this happens as soon as I load my family, other times I can play for a while without this happening. In my Sims 3 Documents folder, I have sometimes (but not always) had a DamX86Dll.dll error message. For a while, I found I could play for longer by closing down all other windows and doing a file cleanup to erase temporary files, but that no longer works either. The crashes most often occur when I'm moving the screen around the lot or adjusting the postioning in tab-mode. The game sort of freezes for a moment, then the screen will go black.

edit - I just checked with my sister who plays the Sims using a different account, and she's experiencing the same crashes.

System specs:
==System==
•Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, build 7600)
•System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
•System Model: K52F
•Processor: Intel® Core™ i5 CPU m 430 @ 2.27GHz (4CPUs), ~2.3GHz
•Memory: 2048 MB RAM
•Page File: 1818MB used, 1982MB available
•DirectX Version: DirectX 11

==Display==
•Name: Intel® HD graphics
•Manufacturer: Intel Corporation
•Chip Type: Intel® HD graphics (Core i5)
•Approx. Total Memory: 758MB
•Main Driver: igdumd64.dll, igd10mund.dll (there is another one but I can’t see all of it)
•Version: 8.15.10.2202
•Driver Date: 25/8/10

==Sound==
•Description: ?
•Driver Name: CHDRT64.sys
•Driver Version: 4.98.0018.0000
•Date: 30/10/09

==Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives== (I don’t seem to have this, the only other tab I have is input)
•Drive:
•Free Space:
•Total Space:
•File System:
•Model:


Things I've tried:
This fix: http://linna.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=375907 (>2g was alrady enabled)
Playing with and without awesome mod
Using Delphy's dashboard to try and locate and fix buggy custom content
Reading other forums with similar problems

But I'm not much of a computer expert and I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do now.
Thanks so much if you can help me fix this.

Last edited by Remore : 19th Apr 2011 at 10:22 AM.

Setting the game to use more than 2 Gigs of RAM is a bit pointless when you only have 2 Gigs of RAM .

Well, I'll still suggest you try playing with completely clean userfiles (rename the The Sims 3 folder in Documents), just in case that helps.

Really, though, that computer isn't nearly strong enough to play Sims 3 - the CPU is ok, but you need at least twice the amount of RAM that you have for playing TS3 under Windows 7, and you don't have a graphics card - just a crappy little chip on the motherboard. The progression of problems you've experienced suggests that you've been overstressing the computer, particularly the graphics chip, for quite some time now, and now it's wearing out completely.

You can try the things in this FAQ - written for TS2 but applicable to TS3 as well - to prolong the playing life of the computer: Game Help:Onboard Graphics^wiki. You should be aware, though, that those things may not help, and that if you do keep playing TS3 on this machine without upgrading (if it's a desktop - laptops often can't be upgraded), you'll end up with a dead computer sooner or later.

I was hoping that wouldn't be the case.

It's obvious I need to take a break from my sims until I can update both my understanding of computers and my pc itself. Do you know what the optimum system requirements for the sims 3 are so I can make sure I meet them?

Thanks so much for your help.

The system requirements are listed here: Game Help:TS3 System Requirements^wiki. Remember, though, that those are the minimums - more is better! It's hard to say what's optimum, as every patch increases the requirements, and we don't know how long that'll go on.

You definitely need at least 4Gig of RAM: I would go with 6 or 8 if possible. An i5 or i7 CPU is what you want to look at - i3s are a bit low-end - and any speed within the 2-3Ghz range is fine. As far as graphics cards go, you can get away with an oldish card (GeForce 9xxx, 1xx or 2xx series, Radeon 4xxx or 5xxx), but if you want to be sure that you'll be able to play reliably and with nice graphics into the future, get something in the all-green sections of the chart on the page I linked to.

You should also be aware that a proper gaming laptop will be much, much more expensive than a desktop of similar power.

Thank you!

I'll see what I can do!