I believe you could play the game just alright before installing the patch, so I'll skip that question. What may be the reason of your crashes is a cache overload, lack of Virtual Memory space, or low RAM. For further discussion, please try to be sure if your game doesn't run even after
cleaning your caches.
If it doesn't, make sure there is enough HD space for the Virtual memory that gets built up while playing the game, because if there's no free space for it, the game will close. You should also turn off DEP (Data Execution Prevention) for The Sims's executable. RAM memory is the most common crash cause, and sadly, the only solution then is buying more RAM.
If none of the above is what is causing your problem (or if you want to try something else before rushing out to buy more RAM), let me know.
