More Awesome Than You!

I'm having a problem with my game starting after awhile.  I can run it and play, then shut down up to 4 times. On the next attempt, the disk will spin up, Bon Voyage will be listed in the task manager, then the disk will spin down. It will then disappear from the task manager and then...nothing. No message, crash notice...zip. If I uninstall BV and reload, we start it all over again. Up to 4 times and that's all she wrote.

I have all expansions and stuff packs. I have tried starting with and without downloads - tried removing SecuRom and running with it. Nothing helps.  Any Ideas? Please help me - I'm stupid  :'(

Oh...I'm running XP Pro - 10gig free on drive (that's after installing downloads) and I have 1gig memory.

Have you ever cleaned your computer?  Sounds like overheating. Check the back to see if there's an accumulation of dust and gunk.

Your specs sound OK.  Do you mean that you shut down your game up to 4 times, or that the game crashes/shuts down on its own.  If you are repeatedly shutting down your game and restarting, there may be a memory problem (RAM may not clear properly and the next time you start the game there are fewer resources available each time - this appears to happen in my system as well).  Log out of your account and re-login and this should solve it.

If the situation is that the game crashes on its own, it could be overheating (sounds about right), or possibly some strange CC borking things (although the fact that it seems to run for a while seems to make this less likely).  As regards overheating, you also want to check to make sure your cooling fans are all working properly.

I'm assuming you close non-essential processes from the Task List before you play.

Have you tried deleting the groups.cache file after every play session? I've had this issue occasionally, or one similar to it, and all that was needed was to delete that file.

I shut the game down. And it isn't an overheating issue, this much I'm sure. And I regularly clean the inside of the case.
It happens when I shut down for the evening or when I turn off the computer, and I try to restart the game the next day or so. It seems to let me restart up to 4 times, some times less.

I'll try the groups.cache thing the next time it happens. I just reinstalled - deleted my downloads and downloaded fresh copies of the files. Also ran the hack conflict detector and duplicate file remover program. And just to make sure, virus and malware checked. Everything checks out fine.

It has only started happening since Bon Voyage. I may need to reload Windows, but that will be my last resort.

The first time you start up on any day, you can run the game?  No problems?  Things work?Then you shut down the game and come back a bit later and restart?  And your compy will work for about 4 restarts?

That's what I understand from your post.  If this is the case and your rig does not start your game on attempt 5, relogin or reboot to clear RAM.  I'm assuming that this will allow your game to run again.  (This occasionally happens on my system as well.)

I'm not convinced it's a game or hack problem, since you seem to indicate that your game runs fine generally.  It is a general computer resource use issue, I suspect.

Otherwise, it's pancake bunny time.

Sorry it took so long to answer again.
Actually, once the game refused to restart, the only thing I could do is reload. Even shutting the computer down did nothing to help.

But I may have fixed it. After reloading the game and installing my custom content,  I ran the hack detection utility and a duplicate file finder, removing all the files that it found suspect. I then bypassed the launcher exe and started running the ep6.exe. It has started and restarted many times with no problems. I don't know which of these helped, or perhaps a combination of all, but it is running fine.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their input.  :)

Thanks!