Seasons is crashing

[Bangelnuts]

I haven't had the crashing yet but the Ram leak is definitely there !I have a gig of memory and a 2.77 GIG DL that is still being culled I got rid of furnishings,skins and some hair and all never used decor. I am now culling clothing. trying to reduce even further at desktop I have 772mb of ram available in pleasantview at SSU I am getting a 95.72 mb of available. ram . I am going to call EA today. sibce the specs swear 256mb is enough ram to run seasons  there is no way the leak should be this bad

[blubug]

blubug..can you not get into any lot and play? I do notice the lots in hoods I had before I installed seasons
are slow loading but I don't get the dreaded "This Application has crashed blah blah until I play for awhile.
Maybe a couple of hours or maybe a few minutes...not real consistent there.

Sorry for answering late, but I have these problems upon loading the lots (when I DO have them) so yes, I cannot enter them. When I fire up the game again, I can enter the exact lot with no problems. But it is random. Sometime I have the game on for days non-stop, sometimes it's 5 minutes after starting. But always on the loading screen. Since I delete my groups.cache every time I load the game, the crashes are rare.

[notveryawesome]

I've had this same problem with random lots crashing my game since Pets. It's infuriating, and I'd like to know what causes it, so I can avoid mishaps in the future..

[jsalemi]

In the past, random lots crashing was caused by saving the lot while someone was talking on a cell phone.  I think the solution was usually to turn testing cheats on, enter the lot and delete anything that throws an error.  Or there was also a different fix, maybe, but I can't remember what it is now -- a search on 'cell phone' here might turn it up.

[Cons]

I have no cell phones anywhere.So I can rule that out.
Played today for 5 hours in Roseblossomhills. Just with all the hacks in, no CC other than my hacked objects.
Checked the amount of free ram before I colsed it and it was at 178852 meg, after I shut down I had 808908 meg free.

I was able to load 2.5 gig of custom content in Pets without a glitch. Now I don't think so. May have to buy more ram to load it up. Which you really shouldn't have to do. I did fill out a bug report for EA and point blank asked if they had a memory leak in this game. Sent them the log. My DL folder right now is 102 meg.
It crashed with 500 something in there. I think the maximum ram this MB can handle is 2 gig, which is about the maximum XP will utilize properly. Vista can utilize more ram, but then Vista sucks ram up all by itself.I don't have Vista and I don't want it.

[trancejeremy]

Seasons is much more of a memory hog than any previous expansion.  You can hit ctrl-shift-S  while in the game to see your frame rate and how much memory the game is using.  Seasons seems to be using about 200-250 megs of memory more than Pets.  (On my computer, I was using about 500-600 on Pets, with Seasons it's jumped to 700-850).  And note, I don't really have much custom content other than clothing and hair (ie, no furniture).

I also am getting a really bad slowdown at night, down to about 20 fps, and then when the water is being used, it drops to the 10s.  While in Pets, I got a pretty steady 70-50 fps (and during the day, that's what I get in Seasons)

[KatEnigma]

Seasons is much more of a memory hog than any previous expansion.  You can hit ctrl-shift-S  while in the game to see your frame rate and how much memory the game is using.  Seasons seems to be using about 200-250 megs of memory more than Pets.  (On my computer, I was using about 500-600 on Pets, with Seasons it's jumped to 700-850).  And note, I don't really have much custom content other than clothing and hair (ie, no furniture).

I also am getting a really bad slowdown at night, down to about 20 fps, and then when the water is being used, it drops to the 10s.  While in Pets, I got a pretty steady 70-50 fps (and during the day, that's what I get in Seasons)

Same here. I watch my usage and my commit charge, and it peaks about 200 MB above when I was running Pets.  I don't think it has a memory LEAK as some claim, because it doesn't get worse as the game goes on, assuming that I'm saving every now and then. That's what a memory leak is, when a program is using RAM and not releasing it like it's supposed to when the program is done with it, so that it continually sucks up more and more RAM the longer it runs. Seasons uses about the same amount from the time I load a lot until I shut down the game.  It just uses more RAM. Period.  All those extra things it has to keep track of just sucks up memory. I really don't know why anyone is surprised or why they think it's using more than it "should" based on wherever they pull "should" from. *shrug*

[notveryawesome]

In the past, random lots crashing was caused by saving the lot while someone was talking on a cell phone.  I think the solution was usually to turn testing cheats on, enter the lot and delete anything that throws an error.  Or there was also a different fix, maybe, but I can't remember what it is now -- a search on 'cell phone' here might turn it up.

This was not the case with me. These were community lots only, and the crashes would happen when attempting to load them from the neighbourhood, as well as when sending my sims via taxi or owned car (or at least attempting to). The crash would happen during loading, and it was rarely the same lot twice. The only thing the lots had in common was that they were community lots and were medium-sized or larger. I have a fast processor and plenty of RAM, so I've no idea what caused the crashes. Reinstalling Pets and culling my Downloads folder seems to have helped, but I don't think Downloads had anything to do with the initial problem, as the problem began suddenly during a time when I hadn't installed any new CC for well over a month. It is truly puzzling.

[ZiggyDoodle]

I don't think it has a memory LEAK as some claim, because it doesn't get worse as the game goes on, assuming that I'm saving every now and then.

At first I thought it was a memory leak, but I had been having intermittent delayed write failure errors in TS2 upon exiting.  That, coupled with the sudden disappearance of my HD this weekend, led me to take my system to my local tech.  After four days of heavy duty testing (and the reappearance of my perfectly okay HD), a cable replacement seems to have fixed the DWF error and my system certainly is running better.

With my computer back home finally, I played tonight and kept notes.  Opened the game with 1635MB free Ram; lowest it got to was 101 MB after opening Bluewater, then it went back up to 999.  The reading was 852MB free when I finally closed the game - much, much better numbers than I was getting before the cable replacement.  I concur with Katenigma that Seasons is a memory hog.  Okay if you're running with two gigs, but EA is out of their fricken mind to claim 512 is acceptable.

[Cons]

ZiggyDoodle,
I did a clean install of the game today. So running it now with only my hacks in it and hacked objects. About 100 meg of content. Loaded with 346 meg of ram free at the entry into a house in Roseblossomhills. After about 2 hours of play I checked it and it had 189 meg free, after 3 hours 178 meg free. So it is declining on this machine anyway. Which would indicate a memory leak. Will just have to keep an eye on it. Because all my crashes before with the exception of 1 I think were after 2 to 3 hours of play and the memory was low then. I probably won't have time to play any long times for a few days. Have some tax returns to get out
for a couple of clients. (I don't do many any more..trying to retire completely from this. After 35 years I've about had enough, LOL)

So I'll let you know how it goes.

[KatEnigma]

And now tonight I was watching, and after 2 1/2 hours of play, I steadily went down from 945+MB of free RAM when I first loaded the lot to 520+  I did not see that kind of drop at all last night when I was playing. Maybe the Plant Sims have a memory leak?  Tonight was the first night I played one.  Once, it did pop back up to 730MB after I'd saved, but other times, saving didn't make a difference.

Odd, just odd.

It's still a memory hog, regardless of leaks, though. 

[ZiggyDoodle]

Cons, are you using Cacheman?  Might help with recovering memory.

http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_charisma_page=products.

[Cons]

ZiggyDoodle

Saved your link.I'm on several Hardware BBS's and one of my friends is an expert in memory. Works for OCZ.
I'll post the problem on his BBS. See what he thinks and recommends to maybe corner the problem.
They used to use cacheman but don't know if there is a later and greater proggie out there or not.

katenigma Something with the game declines memory after you play for awhile. I don't play plant sims so I wouldn't think that was it.

[witch]

Hmm. The other night I discovered the game lagging badly when trying to go fast speed at night. I'm running an AMD dual core Athlon 64 4400. (2GB RAM). I saw mention of a possible dual core problem in this thread?

Saving didn't help, neither did exiting the game, rebooting and reloading. I had been playing for a week prior to that with no problems. I turned anti-aliasing down to half, turned off shadows, still no lag difference.

How do you test RAM whilst running - just Windows Task Manager or is there a better way of getting a log? Is that what Cacheman does? I know, I'll Google it. 

Is it possible to introduce a virus to the game via a mod or object?

[Cons]

witch

I saw a post at the Sims2.com by a gal running an Athlon 64x2 that was having a glitch. Like I said a dual core shouldn't have any problem at all.Dual core's are super fast processors. Both AMD and Intel one's. My processor is an A64 but not dual core.

I check to see the ram usage by checking before I load the game in task manager, then ALT-TAb the game when I enter a house and see what task manager says is free and then do the same thing after a couple of hours of play to see if it's changed. Not sure how the other's are doing it, but that's how I've been checking it.

I did use the Ctrl-shift+s once to see what it said but other than the frame rates on the video card flashing
at 20FPS then up to 40FPS then down then up, it really didn't tell me much. I'll have to run it again and see if it will hold still long enough for me to read everything.

One possibility is the video card is needing mega ram to operate. My card is a 256 meg card but my aperature in BIOS  is set for another 256 meg of system ram to be available for the video card to use. So it's possible that's what is sucking the ram down after extended play. But I'd be more prone to think a memory leak of some kind because the longer you play the more it declines.

[witch]

I don't think it's a memory leak I'm experiencing or I should have regained speed after restarting. Also, the speed loss was constant, not declining.

I've downloaded Cacheman and that puts an icon in the system tray with either a graph or a numeric indicator of how much RAM is being used.

Thing is, I played again last night with no memory lag. 

ETA: Although I'm wondering about invisible gardeners and so forth, I have one family in a new hood and 261 character files. I don't think SimPE is updated yet, so I can't go and see what the characters are.

[kewian]

Now I had  a similar problem trying to get to one family , while it was loading the music would start stuttering and then it would crash.  Everytime, it happened after I hit the disable cc content and then restarted the game.  I do have a nividia geforce 6150 le card and 2 gb of ram.  I doubt if its the ram at least for mine.  Yes, seasons is installed.  I put in my backup copy and it worked then.

[angelyne]

ETA: Although I'm wondering about invisible gardeners and so forth, I have one family in a new hood and 261 character files. I don't think SimPE is updated yet, so I can't go and see what the characters are.

I've been using SimPE with Seasons.  I've modified edited my characters. Apart from the warning message, it all seems to work fine.  I noticed that trying to pull up the neighbourdhood memories doesn't work, and I'm sure other things are broken as well, but viewing and editing characters seems fine.

[witch]

OK Ta. I'll backup and give it a bash.

[Argon]

I'm wondering if it's actually something to do with the Safedisc crap they use. I know on my desktop the game always crashes before the game loads if I don't use a mini image with Daemon Tools or the crack; every time I try with the original cd the game blows up. But it seems to work just fine on my laptop most of the time.

[KatEnigma]

Mine was on a brand new lot I'd just built for the Greenmans, and I didn't hire any NPC's at all until right before I shut the game down.  It was a larger lot than I'd been running lately, with a huge greenhouse.... I just don't know why sometimes it runs fine, and sometimes it doesn't, with nothing truly different between instances.

I play windowed, so I just keep task manager running.  I do have an X2 processor, but my processing was fine- about 52%, which was about what it was running with before Seasons.

[Cons]

Here's a link that might help everyone at least optimize their windows XP for "gaming". I had a great deal of  this done before I found it but more suggestions there that I hadn't done. It's a little snappier now. LOL
http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/windows_xp_opt/


Also for those of you that into really deep tweaking of WINXP here's another link.....fiddle at your own risk.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm

Black VIper used to have the best on tweaking WINXP, but he's putdated at the moment. But is going to update.

[KatEnigma]

I've done the Black Viper suggestions before, but I suggest if you do, print it out and note what you changed. I had something I turned off unexpectedly prevent some critical Windows security update from installing. It was only after much searching through the help files that it referenced this one service, and I'd remembered tweaking it (not even to off, just to manual!) The best option is to set up a separate account  to tweak for gaming, and let another account left to Windows' default settings, so you can still do what's necessary.

[Cons]

I never let Winders Update itself automatically. Have that disabled permanently and always have. Not that you shouldn't especially if you use IE.(Isn't this Pescados' view also..thought I read that in a thread) But I don't and won't. You can drive a semi through IE and nobody would notice, security patches or not. This machine has been virus free for two years+ now and never gets any spyware crud. But I use Firefox and keep it up to date and Thunderbird for my email. It's kept up to date also. It's usually just winders users that use IE and OE that call me saying can you fix my machine...and normally they have more damn crud in there than you can shake a stick at. Sometimes format C and reinstall is their only recourse....unless they want to pay me for all that time killing off spyware and Virus.Usually they aren't too keen on that.But I also have a router on this machine that stops lots of stuff. Uses both NAT and
SPI which doesn't allow much of anything to come in here. So I don't use winders dippy firewall either. And I keep my AV up to date.Before I got this Satellite Broadband we were on Dial up and I used Sygate then. It didn't annoy me too much and it stopped outgoing and incoming crud.

Even though not much can run in the background anymore this damn game was down to 76,400 meg of ram available after 4 hours of play tonight.  But then some of the IT's say that's not a bad thing, you shouldn't have excess memory.....then gamers argue you need more ram and more ram.....so who's to say?

[KatEnigma]

I got mad and uninstalled my AV yesterday. Between the router, Firefox, Thunderbird, and not being stupid, I'm safer than your average idiot WITH an AV. But even if you don't use IE, you need to keep windows updated with critical updates. You don't need to keep the service running, you just need to remember when it's the 2nd Tuesday of the month and do it by hand. There are 3 zillion holes in Windows that have nothing whatsoever to do with IE or OE.

(I am currently running a 30 day trial of Nod32, but if I'm not happy with that, I WILL run completely without an AV. I'm sick of them sucking up all my resources)