Well, needless to say since generations came out I have not been able to play the sims (seems to happen every expansion)... Anyway.

I finally got the game running last night, after a complete uninstall and re-installed everything from scratch. The game worked, so then I added my CC back, still worked. I basically just tested to see if it worked, then I closed it and went to bed.

This morning was the first time I actually tried playing, so I start a brand new town (got rid of all old saves, etc just incase) and I played around in edit town mode for a good 30 minutes, with no problems. I then went to live mode for maybe a minute, then I got a black screen where I could see the cursor, and hear the music. Eventually the music stopped, and I got a windows error ; something about closing the program.

It has since crashed everytime in live mode, after only a minute or so. Build/buy/edit town all seem to work fine. Live mode even works fine until it black screens on me. I only ever got the error the first time though, every other time I just get a black screen with a cursor and music for a bit which will eventually stop.

I am about 5 minutes from chucking my computer out the window...

Fixed it.

I previously had all my Sims + expansions under my DEP, but I went in and just changed it to the one in the Sims 3 folder.

Everything appears to be working properly now.