Yet Another (More Different!!) Crashing Seasons Problem.

[Edana ni Emer]

Yeah, installed Seasons just fine... worked great.  Go to open the game, the opening movie shows up, plays through, and when it ends and the load screen pops up I get a blank error message with 'okay' to click.  I click, it crashes to desktop.  I try again, in both windowed and fullscreen.  I uninstall my entire game and all the packs, reinstall just the base game and Seasons.  Same thing happens.

Anybody got a clue? This doesn't sound like a driver issue... nothing's loading enough for the drivers to get put to work yet.

[Bangelnuts]

are you trying to run the game with your fire wall on? sometimes that will cause a problem. I have all EP's and seasons installed and I am not having an issue.also did you shut down unneccesary background tasks. The Sims 2 and Ep's including Seasons use a lot of resources while running. to shut down background tasks ctrl+alt+delete to bring up the task manager window. click user name and it will list all tasks running in the background. under "owner " shut down all task's except for taskmgr.exe and explorer.exe. when the warning bar pops up click ok.each time. this will free up the resources needed to run the game. the game manual that came with seasons gives a few helpful hints for running the game and it's running requirements.

[J. M. Pescado]

You should definitely leave your firewall on when playing TS2. TS2 has been known to make suspicious attempts to phone home and is suspected of being spyware.

[Bangelnuts]

You should definitely leave your firewall on when playing TS2. TS2 has been known to make suspicious attempts to phone home and is suspected of being spyware.

The Sims2 can't phone home on my computer since I never play while my computer is hooked to the internet,my modem burned out in a thunderstorm and I haven't replaced it yet

[jrd]

You should definitely leave your firewall on when playing TS2. TS2 has been known to make suspicious attempts to phone home and is suspected of being spyware.

Phone home is not necessarily spyware; but that's besides the point.

TS2 should only phone home if the autologin check (which is supposed to check for patches) is enabled. This is disabled by default and should be left so.

Only the EALink Spyware versions continually phone home.

[Edana ni Emer]

are you trying to run the game with your fire wall on? sometimes that will cause a problem. I have all EP's and seasons installed and I am not having an issue.also did you shut down unneccesary background tasks. The Sims 2 and Ep's including Seasons use a lot of resources while running. to shut down background tasks ctrl+alt+delete to bring up the task manager window. click user name and it will list all tasks running in the background. under "owner " shut down all task's except for taskmgr.exe and explorer.exe. when the warning bar pops up click ok.each time. this will free up the resources needed to run the game. the game manual that came with seasons gives a few helpful hints for running the game and it's running requirements.

I'm doing everything exactly the same as I have been while playing the game for the last six months or so.  But just for the sake of argument, I tried it anyway: no change.  I even updated my video drivers.  No change. Well, after wrestling with the goddamn things for three hours because my computer didn't want to recognize them.    I updated DirectX, too.  I've got plenty of resources, and everything was working fine up until Seasons. I think if it was a resource problem it would actually say something to that effect on the error message instead of giving me a blank one, and would make at least an attempt at loading the game itself.

[Cons]

Ummmm which video card do you have? Which drivers did you put in? Not all work with Sims 2. Even ATI has it glitches with Seasons if I read the read me correctly.

I'm going to change mine...dragging my butt because that sometimes can be a real migraine event. Especially if the next set doesn't help and I have to try another set and another....

My son had a problem with WOW and a 9600 Pro Radeon card. He about wore the damn thing out putting different drivers in and nothing helped it.He finally got another video card. Think he got the X800 when it was the biggie. Been a year ago so I don't remember for sure. That fixed it.

[Bangelnuts]

are you trying to run the game with your fire wall on? sometimes that will cause a problem. I have all EP's and seasons installed and I am not having an issue.also did you shut down unneccesary background tasks. The Sims 2 and Ep's including Seasons use a lot of resources while running. to shut down background tasks ctrl+alt+delete to bring up the task manager window. click user name and it will list all tasks running in the background. under "owner " shut down all task's except for taskmgr.exe and explorer.exe. when the warning bar pops up click ok.each time. this will free up the resources needed to run the game. the game manual that came with seasons gives a few helpful hints for running the game and it's running requirements.

I'm doing everything exactly the same as I have been while playing the game for the last six months or so.  But just for the sake of argument, I tried it anyway: no change.  I even updated my video drivers.  No change. Well, after wrestling with the goddamn things for three hours because my computer didn't want to recognize them.    I updated DirectX, too.  I've got plenty of resources, and everything was working fine up until Seasons. I think if it was a resource problem it would actually say something to that effect on the error message instead of giving me a blank one, and would make at least an attempt at loading the game itself.

I guess I am one of the lucky ones my ancient 3 year old computer is still well above specs for seasons and has not had issues with it . I have a Pentium 4 Compaq Presario  with 2.4 processing speed overclocked professionally to 2.8  MSI (Nvidia GE force FX 5200 video card )1024 mb ram 778 mb system ram available 240 GB hard drive. Iread that hard drive space plays a factor in Seasons . 5GB free is needed for the game not sure why but that's what I .read also the newer nvidia drivers seem to wreak havoc with  both Pets and Seasons .I refused to update my drivers because of this.if you are using Nvidia you maay want to roll back your driver to an earlier version.

[Edana ni Emer]

Ummmm which video card do you have? Which drivers did you put in? Not all work with Sims 2. Even ATI has it glitches with Seasons if I read the read me correctly.

An ATI Diamond Viper Radeon x1600 Pro with the latest drivers.   I don't have quite enough RAM to make Sims 2  perfectly happy, but 512 is okay as long as my lots aren't too big and I don't cram them too full of pointless crap.

[Cons]

You'd think your card would be ok. It's not on the list in the read me as one having glitches with Sims2 etc.
Drive you nuts though looking for the problem.

[Edana ni Emer]

Tell me about it.  Even if the error popup would give me a clue, that'd be a big help.    

[Cons]

Look in EA GAmes/Sims2 Folder under My Documents, Logs and find the last dated entry on any .txt file in there.
Might give you a clue as to what the termination was. Mine were always under Sims2Exception. Click on that/those .txt files and see what it says shut it down. Damn screen doesn't tell you anything.

[Edana ni Emer]

Well, here's one of the logs... not quite sure how to read it to find out what's wrong. If anyone can give me a hand, I'd appreciate it.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Bangelnuts]

There is most definitely a memory leak in seasons, no way should it br using 600 mb of Ram to run

[Edana ni Emer]

Is that why it's crashing?  And if it is, is there anything I can do about it?

[Bangelnuts]

Is that why it's crashing?  And if it is, is there anything I can do about it?

it could be  I am going to call EA in the morning and see if there is anything that can be done about the leak

[Edana ni Emer]

Here's hoping there's a fix-it.  *crosses fingers*

[J. M. Pescado]

Phone home is not necessarily spyware; but that's besides the point.

Phoning home is spyware when it occurs in an unsolicited or sneaky way. In this case, TS2 has been detected attempting to phone home to both EA and Microsoft in the past, for no particularly explicable reason and not at all related to autopatching

TS2 should only phone home if the autologin check (which is supposed to check for patches) is enabled. This is disabled by default and should be left so.

Why do they even BOTHER with autopatching? I think of the number of programmer and tester hours that went into making this useless feature, considering that they PRACTICALLY NEVER PATCH, and just boggle.

[witch]

That's why I have Windoze auto-update turned off. If I need something, I go and get it. Don't give me crap I don't want or need. Same with EA.