Technical problems with THE HORROR: downloading, installing, and running it

[ItchyNScratchy]

Itchy, you need Daemon Tools Lite.  You can use that to mount the .iso, which will then show up like a CD that you put into your drive.

Ah, thank you, that is super. I'm installing now, but I've hit another snag in the road.
<snapped picture>

Hitting Ignore on that brings me this:
CRC error: The file C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Caches\TCC_Version.txt doesn't match the file in the setup's .cab file. The medium from which you are running the setup may be corrupted c; contact your software vendor.

AllThumbnails.package is showing corrupted too.

and it just goes on and on....

Finally installed. I had to redo the .iso as somehow it didn't go through completely the first time. Thanks for the help, everyone.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Before you mounted it using Daemon Tools and tried installing it, did you look to see if your previous installation (or almost-an-installation, as it were) left behind anything in the Program Files on your C drive (or whatever letter drive you tried installing it to), in your My Documents Folder, or even in the Windows registry?  The Sims games tend to do that and won't install properly if there's something left behind for the installation to squabble over.

[ItchyNScratchy]

It seems to be all intact. I've checked my ISO file size--does 5.55 GB sound right?

[Catmaniap]

Sorry for the inconvenience but Im new with all there pirating etc.. things
When I try to install it I extract the rar files but i dont know what to do next. Where do i put the folders and the setup.exe. thing?
I have the leaked version.
Help please?

[Solowren]

Jesus. There is already a thread for this. Please use your eyeballs.

[Catmaniap]

but i still dont get it! english is my second language somethings it's confusing

[Witchboy]

Cat, check your PM box.

[spambi]

It seems to be all intact. I've checked my ISO file size--does 5.55 GB sound right?

That's the right size.

Unrelated question -- I downloaded the razor version and my antivirus program tells me there's a virus in sims3setup.exe. Can anyone a non-virusy version of this file? Thanks

edit: Scratch that. I found that I could open sims3setup.exe with WinRar, extract the real setup file and delete the virus (codec.exe) (Thanks Kyna, you answered my question as I was editing this post.)

[Kyna]

It seems to be all intact. I've checked my ISO file size--does 5.55 GB sound right?

That's the right size.

Unrelated question -- I downloaded the razor version and my antivirus program tells me there's a virus in sims3setup.exe. Can anyone a non-virusy version of this file? Thanks

See if you can open sims3setup.exe with winzip or winrar (or whatever unzip software you are using).  If you can, you'll find the real sims3setup.exe inside the bad file.

[moondance]

Out of curiosity, those playing the game with ATI Radeon HD cards, are you able to turn every graphical option to the highest?  I can turn up every option except for edge smoothing.  I'm getting smooth lines, obviously, but it's also giving me sims with no hair...or bald tops, in any case.  Just curious, because Sims 2 was able to handle all of the options turned up, and I never got any weird effects to go with it.

It also seems that those of us with HD audio cards are having sound issues, somewhat.

My card is an HD 2400, and no, I've had no issues at all, and I do have all settings on high.  I was a little concerned when I read on here that some peoples' cards/computers were overheating, and mine is one of those little slender Dells with not much space inside (Inspiron 530S,) and nothing impressive in the way of fans, but I've run the game for hours with no problems at all.   

One thing might be worth noting though--or might be irrelevant, but I'll mention it anyway.  I upgraded my drivers a few months ago and immediately started experiencing problems with Sims 2.  I downgraded back to the 8.530 drivers, but not before reading some complaints that the new 9.x drivers seemed to be causing some peoples' video cards to run much hotter than they had before upgrading.  I have no idea if that was an issue that was fixed with subsequent drivers, or if it was an issue that was imaginary in the first place, but I'm still using the 8.530 driver and having no graphical issues with either game, and no overheating.

[Scotty]

My poor graphics card is at deaths door, I can still play the game, but it doesnt look all that shiny.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

My card is an HD 2400, and no, I've had no issues at all, and I do have all settings on high.  I was a little concerned when I read on here that some peoples' cards/computers were overheating, and mine is one of those little slender Dells with not much space inside (Inspiron 530S,) and nothing impressive in the way of fans, but I've run the game for hours with no problems at all.   

One thing might be worth noting though--or might be irrelevant, but I'll mention it anyway.  I upgraded my drivers a few months ago and immediately started experiencing problems with Sims 2.  I downgraded back to the 8.530 drivers, but not before reading some complaints that the new 9.x drivers seemed to be causing some peoples' video cards to run much hotter than they had before upgrading.  I have no idea if that was an issue that was fixed with subsequent drivers, or if it was an issue that was imaginary in the first place, but I'm still using the 8.530 driver and having no graphical issues with either game, and no overheating.

That's what's odd for me -- no overheating (have a cooling kit and many fans inside this beast), so that's not an issue.  I have a HD 3200, so I should also be able to set edge smoothing to high without getting almost bald sims.  I do have the 9.5s that came out earlier this month, and I've had to play "Find A Good Driver" before when I still had a Nvidia and was getting the wonderful blue screen of Sims 2 death, so maybe I have to play that game again.

[Yaakovashoshana]

This is not technically a technical problem, since I haven't acquired the Sims 3 yet, but I have noticed an anomaly when it comes to system requirements. I have a 6 year old desktop that runs The Sims 2 + plus all EP's and SP's with no problem. I went to that "Can You Run It?" site just to see if my rig was up to the new game. It failed . . . and I really wasn't too surprised.

I have a much newer laptop - only a couple of years old - and went to the same site. I tested Apartment Life and it failed, which I expected. I had already tried installing the Sims 2 on that machine, and the graphics card is not supported, which made the resulting gameplay less than impressive. However, when I tested my laptop for Sims 3, it passed with the CPU and Video Card just beyond the minimum requirement.

Does this strike anyone else as odd - that the newer machine can't run the older game, but it will run the newer (and supposedly more graphics-intensive) game? Just wondering.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

I'm wondering if it gave you a lower score on the laptop just because it's a laptop.  Or perhaps the older computer has a better video card (or a better something in any case) than the laptop does (which can be the case).

[Yaakovashoshana]

I'm wondering if it gave you a lower score on the laptop just because it's a laptop.  Or perhaps the older computer has a better video card (or a better something in any case) than the laptop does (which can be the case).

I don't think the site differentiates between laptop or desktop when it checks the system. It just runs an applet that checks CPU, RAM, OS, Video, Sound and Available Disk Space.

It merely seems strange to me that the graphics card on the new machine that isn't good enough to run the old game will supposedly run the new game. I would certainly think that the Sims 3 would be more graphics-intensive than the Sims 2.

Maybe I'm wrong. It's happened before.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Something has to be scoring lower on the laptop for a reason.  Sims 2 gave me an A+ with this computer, while Sims 3 was scored a little lower.

Edit:  And here's that balding sim thing I was talking about.  Tried forcing anti-aliasing, and while I got beautiful graphics otherwise, I still got these goddamn balding sims, so I had to turn it back to application-controlled. 



After having such beautiful graphics on Sims 2, the jagged edges are killing me.

[TashaYarrr]

Zaphod, I'm gonna crank up AA on my card and see if I can replicate your results.

MEANWHILE...

I'm not sure if this has been happening all along in my game and is just now getting to me, or if it's newish behavior: there is horrific stuttering/jerking when I rotate or pan the camera. I've tried quite a combo of low/high settings and it's still happening. Could someone with somewhere in the realm of an NVIDIA 8800 or 9600 let me know how it is on their system? Just hold down the rotate key (either pushing the menu button or using <> keys) and tell me if this occurs smoothly. Zoom should be about normal household-play level.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Ah, thanks. 

Also, after installing the Razor + patch version, I'm still getting random crashing to desktop.  Is anyone else without overheating issues getting this error, too?  I'll wait for an answer here before I try switching drivers.

[TashaYarrr]

I've had no CTDs, just some system freezes that never recurred after I uninstalled RLD.

I can't remember (it's been a whole week or so since I was in this thread much, and I'm old), but I think crash-to-desktop was happening more commonly with ATI users?

Meanwhile, one of the following improved my camera-movement stutter significantly:

--restarting PC
--disabling Kaspersky
--deleting cache files

Scientific method rules.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

For fuck's sake, I resorted to ATI after the Nvidia bug bullshit, and now ATI has a problem with the game.  Excuse me while I go beat my head against the wall.

[morriganrant]

For the Hair issue, turn adaptive anti-aliasing off. Adjust Anti-aliasing yourself, try turning on edge detect. I want to say that there was another setting we fooled with to get rid of that issue, but for the past 2 days I haven't been able to play so have forgotten. Plus I uninstall reloaded and installed Razor, so my settings are not set up the way they were just yet.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Yes, this was it.  Thank you.  I'd tried fiddling with the anti-alias and edge smoothing settings, but forgot about having the adaptive settings still on.  Can't believe that caused all this damn wonkiness, but nevertheless, thanks again.

[TheQuietOne]

Would anyone know what exactly is this supposed to do - The Sims 3 Unsupported Hardware & Graphics Crack - http://www.mininova.org/tor/2641581?

Readme states as follows:

The Sims 3 Unsupported Graphics Card Workaround
---
in this economy, who the hell can afford to just go out and upgrade hundreds of dollars worth of hardware -
people who say "Oh just go buy a better PC or video card" need to try working to
make their own living, since having access to their rich parents' money makes them
think they know it all. What the hell are they doing downloading torrents! if it
were that easy to just up and buy all that hardware, you could have bought the
game just as easy.... shut up, assholes.....
---
DLL files Brought to you by Kajinkodda
---
The watermark that Swiftshader places is removed, so you can play games
without any problems.
---
To use this, just place the two dll files and the Swiftshader.ini file into
the same directory as the game.
C:\program files\electronic arts\the sims 3\game\bin

Then just run the game and you're off.

It's a bit on a whiny side for my taste and lacks any real description. I'm quite fond of my computer so asking more Awesome than me for advice is clearly the only sane option here. Thanks.

[TapThatBooty]

That doesn't work, it just makes the game slow and choppy.

I thought it would fix my crashing, and now the wierd line problems, but nada.

I've asked on here a few times for peoples input about what could be causeing my problems but no one has even registered my posts.

[SlickCee]

Is there any reason why my game is taking forever to render things?

  Say I follow one of my Sims to work and then go back to the house. First, the house will remain blurry- like the other houses when you are far away from them- for a minute, and when I finally do get inside it takes forever for all the objects to get their textures back. In build and buy mode when I am using the color wheel tool, whenever I highlight an object it looses its texture. Yes, the texture gradually comes back in both cases but it is still annoying as hell.
 
  Also, everything has jagged edges. I read something about anti-alias? Would someone mind explaining that to me? 

  I am using the reloaded version if that has anything to do with it. I am going to see if these same problems exist when I get the legit copy of the game.

  Here are my specs...

  Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.090302-1506)
  Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600  @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
  Memory: 3070MB RAM
  Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
  Manufacturer: NVIDIA
  Chip type: GeForce 8800 GT
  Display Memory: 1779 MB