Game crashing, Sim invisible - what do I do?

[snapdragon]

I'm hoping someone can advise me about what could be causing the problems I've been having with TS2 in the past few days. I've always had a variety of problems over the course of playing the game, but these are a different order of magnitude for me. Yesterday my game crashed -- the first time in 8 months of playing that that's ever happened. I had installed the Pets patch, and after looking for advice on the Sims 2 site found that some peoples' games are crashing after they install the Pets patch. I uninstalled Pets, reinstalled, then restored my old Neigborhood.

About 10 min after playing the lot I was playing when the crash happened, suddenly Windows shut down and restarted, saying a serious error had occurred. It said there was a problem with a driver. I tried installing an update of my graphics card, but it wouldn't finish, so I canceled it. BTW, my computer is new (4 months old) - Alienware Area 51 m5750, 2 G RAM, Intel Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon 1800 graphics card.

I started TS2 again and went into the same lot because I wanted to see if it was going to crash again. I played it for half an hour with no crashes, but found that one of the Sims on the lot was now invisible. Also, a still life a Sim had been painting diappeared. I quit the game because it was no fun playing if I had to wonder if the game would crash any minute.

One other odd thing that happened about a week ago was another lot I hadn't played in a long time wouldn't open. I moved the family out and moved them into another place, and the daughter's Wants panel was empty. I figured there was something wrong with the family so I moved them to the Sim bin. The lot they had previously occupied now opened with no problem. I don't remember if I had installed the patch before this happened.

Does it sound like my neighborhood is hopelessly corrupted -- do I have to start all over again? Or should I unintall and reinstall the base game and EPs and then restore my saved neighborhood? I thought starting over with Pets unpatched would help, but there seem to be a lot of serious things going wrong with this Neighborhood. Any information or suggestions about what to do would be greatly appreciated.

[dizzy]

If you can, you might want to consider doing a memory test and if that passes do a clean install of Windows. Then upgrade your video driver.

[snapdragon]

How do I do a memory test? I already clicked on link in another thread that I think was for a memory test, and it said it couldn't run the test on my computer. So the problem could be with Windows, not the TS2 software? If I have 2 G of RAM, why would there be an issue with memory? Thanks for responding, despite all my questions.

[Anne]

One other odd thing that happened about a week ago was another lot I hadn't played in a long time wouldn't open. I moved the family out and moved them into another place, and the daughter's Wants panel was empty.

I don't know if the wants panel being empty is something to seriously worry about - I had that with a family right after installing NL - the little girl's wants kept coming up empty. She is now an elder, and as far as I can tell, she's fine - and I've been playing that neighborhood for over a year now. Her mother later developed a problem with screwy wants showing up, but she was permaplat -I left her alone, and she died not long after, quite uneventfully of old age.

Anyhow, my point is, that may not be anything to worry too much about.

[snapdragon]

Thanks, Anne. With all these screwy occurrences, I'm not sure which are ominous and which not. If you've had a Sim whose wants didn't show up reach adulthood successfully, I guess that's nothing to take seriously. The reason I thought it was significant was that the lot wouldn't load -- when I moved the family and found the daughter's wants missing, I thought that meant the whole family was corrupted and that's why the lot wouldn't load.

It looks like I'm just going to have to keep playing and see what happens, and reconcile myself to either re-installling all the Sims games or maybe re-installing Windows.

The one thing I wonder which I guess I'll never get an answer to is, Is the problem contained in the saved Neighborhood? If I re-install and then install my saved Neighborhood, am I installing the problems again? I don't know the answer to that, and therefore don't know if I need to scrap the neighborhood completely. I guess if it keeps crashing then the answer is yes.

[witch]

Snapdragon, Dizzy is trying to tell you that you may well have a hardware problem. You need to test your RAM to see if its faulty. It might have been the memory test I linked to on another thread that you tried. If that didn't work, then find a memory test that works - through one of the geek sites or something. If none of the memory tests work, you need to talk to the people who sold you the computer and get them to test the RAM.

[snapdragon]

Thanks, Witch. I found a memory test on Microsoft's site but of course am too ignorant to understand how to use it. I thought Dizzy meant I didn't have enough memory but I see now that the memory test checks for errors and hardware problems. I'll ask someone at work to explain how to do the diagnostic. I guess I'll have it all fixed by the time Seasons comes out.