More Awesome Than You!

Hello.  I have a problem with my Sims 2.  I cannot create new Sims.  Either it freezes up in the CAS portion or when I finalize a Sim and try to save it to the game.  It also will occasionally freeze on neighborhood screens when I'm trying to pick a family to play. 

I thought the issue started after installing Apartment Life and someone suggested that I uninstall my game completely and then start fresh.  I did this and the issue was unresolved.  Someone else suggested that I try Bodyshop and see if the issue existed there (it does).  I initially had trouble finding the Bodyshop - it doesn't come up if I just go to the Start menu, programs, EA Games, The Sims 2.  I have to go find the folders and click on Bodyshop in there (yes, I used the Bodyshop from my most recent EP). I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game a couple times now with no results. 

The most recent time I tried uninstall/reinstall, I decided to go one EP/Stuff pack at a time.  Well, it turns out the problem isn't related exclusively to Apartment Life - it started with just the plain Sims 2.  This leads me to believe that something changed in my computer before I installed Apartment Life to cause the problem.  The only thing I know I changed was my RAM - I upgraded from 1.5 to 2gb.  I don't think the RAM is the issue because I do not have problems with any other RAM intensive programs (image manipulation programs, etc).  Can anyone think of a solution for my problem?

Thank you,
JoAryn

Do you have any custom content, especially clothes/hair, and are you using re-using any of your old files with your new installation or did you completely blow everything away? It might be a bad clothing or hair file.

Also, look in the directory \Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Logs for any files that are more than 0 bytes in size - they usually describe some sort of error that happened during the game. ("AppErrors" and "AudioErrors" will have information in them  because The Sims 2 ALWAYS starts up with slightly messed up audio but it doesn't usually affect anything. In your case "AppErrors" may have more than these usual errors - I'm not an expert on this.) Look for these files, especially ones labed "ObjectError" or "Sims2Exception." In time someone from this forum who is more knowledgeable but less friendly than I may want to see these.

Also it's a good idea to search the forum thoroughly to see if anyone else has had similar problems.

I do not have any custom content - I removed all of it to install Apartment Life and the first time I started Apartment Life was the first time I found the issue.  It's possible that the issue may have existed prior to installing AL, but I hadn't created any sims in a while.  When I did the new installation, I removed everything (though I did keep backups of my custom content, houses, sims, etc in a separate directory). 

The only thing listed in Logs is TTIOT-PC-config-log. 

I will to look for similar issues further into the forum.

JoAryn