Sims 3 crashing again - this time in all the worlds

[thesweetestpea]

Close background processes as much as you can and don't run anything but Sims. Don't leave the game open and break up your playing. Save the game as much as you can.

[Frey]

Ok! Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I actually use ctrl-alt-tab a lot so that could be part of the problem. I'll try to avoid that  .

Thanks again for the help, I really appreciate it!

[Frey]

Sorry to double post, but I've been reading around in google about clearing RAM and that kind of stuff and I have a quick update:

I found about a little program called MemoryCleaner. Several reviews and articles I found said it was useful and safe, so I gave it a try. I had just restarted the laptop, and still, when I opened MemoryCleaner, the memory usage was around 65%, so I don't even want to know what memory usage I have while running The Sims. Anyways, this awsome little tool has an option to keep clearing RAM every 5 minutes, or everytime the memory usage reaches 80%. I managed to lower my memory usage to aroung 58% just with 2 clics!  That is obviously while not running Sims 3 or any other similar program, though.

Then I kept googling around and found about msconfig and how to eliminate unnecessary background programs. I also found a website with an awsome list about most common background programs and whether they are necessary or not. So I unchecked everything I could (Photoshop, Itunes, Skype and a whole other bunch of trash), leaving just the necessary stuff and some stuff I wasn't sure about. I restarted the laptop, checked my memory usage again and it was 45%! Amazing!

Anyways, I had to leave some programs running on the background because I was afraid to mess things up. Most of them are related either to CyberLink or to Realtek. Could someone tell me if they are necessary as background programs or if it is safe to uncheck them from the list? My guess is that these programs are the most-RAM-consuming of all, but for what I read they are related to graphics and sound stuff so I didn't touch them. I was kind of afraid they were needed for The Sims to run or something.

I have yet to try of the game still crashes or not, but still, it is good to know my poor laptop is suffering a little less.

Thanks again to everbody 

[Flynn Arrowstarr]

Anyways, I had to leave some programs running on the background because I was afraid to mess things up. Most of them are related either to CyberLink or to Realtek. Could someone tell me if they are necessary as background programs or if it is safe to uncheck them from the list? My guess is that these programs are the most-RAM-consuming of all, but for what I read they are related to graphics and sound stuff so I didn't touch them. I was kind of afraid they were needed for The Sims to run or something.

Hi, Frey.

You can safely remove the CyberLink stuff as it's only used when you're watching a DVD or Blu-Ray movie on the laptop. It should start up if you open something like PowerDVD or whatever you use to watch movies. The RealTek is likely your sound card driver, so you don't want to remove that unless you like playing without sounds, heh.

After doing a quick Google search, I did find some information about your laptop. It has 2 RAM slots according to Samsung's website, and can take a maximum of 8 GB RAM. It sounds like you either have a 2 GB card in there right now, or two 1 GB cards. If you have access to a friendly local geek in Germany, have them look at it to see what type of memory it needs. Memory shouldn't be too expensive, though just remember if you install more than 4 GB RAM in your system, you need to install the 64-bit version of Windows.

Hope this helps.

Flynn

[Frey]

Thanks again Flynn  I think I will wait until I'm in Chile to get more RAM though, I don't have any computer geek friends here in Germany and Computer Stores and Technicians have already tried to steal from me so I don't trust them very much hehe. Not that all of them are like that of course, but still, you never know.

My game is still crashing. I'm not sure if this is still a RAM issue since I managed to lower it down from 92% memory usage in-game to around 70%. I will still get more RAM as soon as I can because that wouldn't hurt, but I'm not sure it's the (or at least the only) problem I'm having.

I'm thinking about contacting EA's customer support. I've heard that personalized help is bad to say the least, but it won't hurt to try I guess. Maybe I'll be lucky. I'm extremely tired of this crashing issue (been fighting it for a year now) and of not knowing what on seven hells is going on in my computer/game. I'm an inch close to stop playing and throwing my CDs in the toilette or play frisbee with them.

Edit: EA's technical support website says that the latest drivers for Nvidia Geforce graphics cards are experiencing incompatibilty issues with the game. What they don't say is what exactly "latest drivers" mean. I'm thinking about going back to a previous one to see if that keeps my game from crashing, but how do I know which one I have to go back to?

[Flynn Arrowstarr]

Hi, Frey.

It's not too hard to roll back the drivers for your card, but it does take a few steps. I think I remember you saying you had Windows 7 installed, so here's the instructions:

• Open the Start menu.
• On the right side of the menu, right-click on the Computer link and select Manage from the menu.
• In the new Management Console window, select Device Manager from the tree on the left side of the screen.
• n the middle section, expand the Display Adapters section and right-click on your graphics card (NVidia 310M).
• Select Properties from the menu.
• Click the Driver tab and then click the Roll Back Driver button.
• Click the OK button to finish. You may have to restart your computer to have the changes take effect.

If the Roll Back Driver button in step 6 is greyed out, then you only have one driver version installed on your computer. In that case, you may want to click the Uninstall button instead and make sure you select Delete drivers in the prompt that follows. Then, reboot and check Windows Update or nVidia's website for updated drivers.

Let us know if this helps.

Flynn

[Frey]

Thanks again for bearing with me Flynn 

I think I've found a workaround for this, and I guess it confirms that the problem (or at least part of it) is lack of RAM.

Memory Cleaner is great, but it turns out it's not a good idea to set it up to clear RAM every 5 minutes while playing the game. It causes more lagging, I guess because what it does, among other things, is clear cache files, and part of those cache files must be files that the game uses while running. So I set up to only clear RAM if the memory usage reaches 80%. I am restarting the laptop before every time I launch the game, I'm not pressing ctrl+alt+tab at all and I am avoiding playing in high speed as much as I can without growing grey hair before my Sims achieve anything. I am also closing literally everything while playing, including my antivirus, Google Chrome, Dropbox and that kind of stuff. And I'm saving and exiting  the game much more often so that the laptop can take a break every now and then. Oh, and I installed Riverview and switched to playing there.

I have absolutely no idea what exactly is helping, but I've been playing for like 1.5 hours today (stopping once to close the game) and my game hasn't crashed. I haven't tried the graphics card driver thing yet because I'm afraid I will mess up things again now it's not crashing. I'll do it if it gets messed up again.

So... fingers closed! I'm still going to get more RAM and consider buying a new graphics card though, since it's clear that my computer won't be able to handle any more EP's before that happens.