More Awesome Than You!

I'm generally a lurker here . . .  made a few posts but they've all been ignored.  X^D  Hopefully this one does not though because I am at a loss now . . .

Anyways, my game has been borked since the end of January.  I have a Dell Dimension 8300 PC with a pretty new nVidia 7600 GS card which I got over the summer.  I forgot all about the nVidia problems with the BSODs and whatnot and bought that after my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro died on me in July (right before we moved, which wasn't very nice of it).  My PC is rather old, but it still runs well:

OS:  XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600), running SP3
BIOS:  Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A07<-This is as updated as I can get it
Processor:  Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz (DirectX Diagnostic says I have 2 CPUs, but I don't believe that's the case but maybe it is considering I bought this PC in 2003 . . . Device Manager says it's a ACPI Multiprocessor PC)
Memory:  4 gigs (only 3.25 gigs recognized by OS)
DirectX:  DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Video:  Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS with 256 MB RAM, AGP Driver:  6.14.0011.8122 from 1/15/2009
Sound:  SB Audigy

I've had the nVidia BSOD issue since I installed FT back in September.  Before that I got it once in a while, but not so often it was unbearable.  I've updated the drivers on many occasions to no avail. 

I installed AL and M&G in January and the BSOD really started to happen all the time.  I tried some drivers a friend suggested NGO NVIDIA Optimized Driver v1.16218 and that seemed to be when my system really got borked.  So I got rid of those drivers, and installed the original drivers that came with the card which didn't work any better, so I tried many different nVidia drivers but it hasn't been right since. 

I thought maybe some bad CC was to blame so started moving out all 13 gigs worth of CC (over 60k of stuff . . .  *sighs*).  But it worked before I tried those weird drivers despite the fact it would still crash randomly due to the BSOD even with shaders off.  I took out all my mods and hacks out of my CC to minimize any conflicts moving it back in so it's basically just CAS, Build & Buy stuff.  Thing is I know none of the CC is responsible because it worked fine (exept for the nVidia BSOD) until I messed with the driver that initial time.  But moving it back in chunks seems to be causing some weird disruption.  :^\ 

These are all the things I've tried to fix it to no avail so far:  I've tested the memory.  I've tested the hard drive.  I've increased the paging file.  I've deleted my Sims folder for a fresh start of the game.  I got rid of Securom and am playing with a No-CD hack currently.  I even uninstalled SetPoint which is a Logitech program for the mouse and keyboard thinking that was in conflict with the game as the BSOD usually occurs when moving the view around a lot.  I increased the refresh rate.  I've made sure I play with Norton disabled and no screen savers on.

But as soon as I start putting my downloads back it starts being wonky.  It'll crash when I click on the screen with the mouse and there's no rhyme or reason to it.  I gave up on trying to reinstate my backup hoods because I'm sure they are borked anyways.  Sometimes it'll crash loading the neighborhood which is a clean hood from here or when loading a lot.  Sometimes it does it just crashes moving the view around or clicking on the screen.  Usually now it's not the nVidia BSOD crash, but the message about the driver being borked comes up.  Granted, I realize that there may be some bad content in there that now that it's been moved around a bit doesn't work anymore.

I'm about to do a complete reinstall of all the games because there are some scripting changes that have been made to it which I didn't change back to do with invisible walls and custom stairs and apparently I didn't install some stuff packs in the correct order (I installed IKEA and K&B before FT).  I think I'm also about to throw the card out and go back to ATI considering the game plays better on my laptop with the ATI card then it does on my PC with the nVidia. 

Maybe those third party drivers messed it up?  I don't know.  I'm running out of ideas.  I suppose it could be a motherboard or power supply issue, neither of which I know how to test; also could be an overheating issue:  used to have that in the summer with the Radeon card. 

I also play at 1024 x 780 windowed when my normal screen resolution is 1280 x 1024 32-bit color though that's never been a problem in the past; I just tried playing on the same resolution windowed and it didn't seem to make a difference and I got the nVidia BSOD. 

I have no clue which one is the best for this card and this game . . .  I've tried Googling it, but this is an old card so the drivers suggested are long gone and aren't even in the archive now.  I've used Driver Cleaner Pro to get rid of the ATI drivers even though I uninstalled it there seemed to be residual stuff that didn't get deleted.  I always run it now when changing drivers, too.  I know that can mess up your system supposedly.  I don't know if that's what happened? 

Did I mess it up with Driver Cleaner Pro?  I didn't always run it in Safe Mode, so not sure if it would have messed something up because of that.  It may also be because I didn't install the later Stuff Packs and EPs in order . . . 

Any ideas what it could be other than what I suggested? 

Any way I can test if the PC is overheating or the motherboard isn't functioning right?  I can't test the power supply because I don't have one of those meters . . .  Though I have a friend who knows how to do it so he's going to at some point (not the same who suggested the drivers). 

And if anyone can point me to best drivers for the card, please let me know.  The newest nVidia one doesn't seem to work well for me but neither do any of the other ones I've tried.

EDIT:  I tried to make it more legible!  Hope that helps a bit. . .  :^\

The problem is the crashing.

What I want to know is what could be causing these driver crashes?  With all that I've tried so far, what am I missing?

I also need to know the most stable driver for this game I can use for the nVidia GeForce 7600 GS card.  I may just end up buying another ATI Radeon card if this problem persists, however.

I know being polite is not "done" here-but could you please go back over your post and edit it so we can read it?

It is one damned long un-punctuated mess of words. Nobody is going to answer this unless you make it readable and coherent, let alone even answer your question-which was what?

Hint: KISS works.

When you try loading the clean neighborhood, is this with and empty/nonexistent Downloads folder, or with all your CC in?  If it's with no Downloads folder, then I can't help you.  But if your Downloads folder with all the CC is in place, and if the game doesn't give you trouble until you try putting in chunks of CC, then my thought is that one or more of your downloaded files has become corrupt.  It happens.  Personally, I'd do a careful binary search to weed out the offending items, and then try downloading them again from wherever or doing without them.

ETA:  MaryH is correct.  Your post is hard to read, and I passed over it the first time because of that.  You'd be surprised how much dividing into logical paragraphs can help.

OK, I'm going to admit to only skimming your post because it was hard to read, but maybe this'll help, maybe not.

I have an Nvidia GeForce 8500 1gb card and had BSOD issues with Vista and Norton, even with norton disabled. I had to uninstall it completely to make them go away. (New machine less than 4 months old now)

Newer Pentiums have hyperthreading and multicores, which make the system think it has two CPUs. This is normal.

However, I can't really find what your problem is, mostly because your post is an incomprehensible mass of gibberish. Define what exactly the PROBLEM is.

Thanks, phyllis_p.  How would I go about doing a binary search?  As of now I've run the Download Organizer, HCDU, Clean Installer and just doing a visual search to weed out suspected bad content and to seperate hacks and mods from regular CC.  Is this something I can do in SimsPE?


I may do that . . .  I had thought to uninstall Norton but was hesitant to because I have 240 days left on the subscription so it seems like a waste of money.  I may just do it anyways and see what happens. 

I have edited the original post everyone into what I hope are more coherent paragraphs.  *kisses?*  X^D  I'm sorry.  My usual style of writing is very William S. Burroughs-like.  I apologize again . . .  *begs for forgiveness!*

You can find instructions on conducting a binary search in the FAQ (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7437.msg208005.html#msg208005), noob.  You should have read this long ago. 

I now officially point and laugh at you.  Ha-ha!!

Good luck.

You may have a long road ahead of you. I have an ATI card (no its not amazing but it is supported) and I had never had my game crash till I got apartment life. I was building an apartment the first day I got it and clicked to swing the camera around and down she went. Anything after Bon Voyage seems to have massive memory leaks and is very taxing on the system and with 13GB of CC I can only imagine how your PC feels. Crashing with nVidia is a lot more common, but just pointing out the middle end ATI cards are starting to reject the game too.

Chain_Reaction:  I think you're right . . .  It's already been what, 3 months now that I've been working on this?  I want to start culling my CC but I don't know what all of it is so I sort of need to make note of it from the game (especially CAS stuff).  I know there's really no way to do that with objects and build stuff. 

I could compress it possibly once I get to a certain point but that gets sketchy if you need to update something that got compressed; sometimes objects get updated if they're messed up or what not.  I wouldn't use the Compressorizer on any hacks or anything obviously.  Anyways, that's for the future anyways. 

I'm still probably going to get another ATI card, the best my system can handle.  I only have PCI and AGP standard slots.  I think the best it can currently handle is either the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro or GTX.  All the other cards I've looked at need PCI-Express, it seems. 

The game has become pretty horrible in the terms of memory leaks and whatnot and it was always bad to begin with so . . .  I guess I'm sadly used to that fact.  Also the hour long full load time (from beginning to when a lot is loaded.)  :^\

phyllis_p:  I've BEEN doing a binary search.  I didn't know the 50/50 method was also called a "binary search".  I've read the FAQ, just not after 2007 when that bit about a binary search was added.  I've been lurking a long time but never really wanted to post that much here (and I still don't).  I guess it's time to refresh myself with it. 

I just wanted to know if anything else could be done in case CC isn't the problem because doing a binary search with over 13 gigs of CC is a bit painful as you can imagine.  Plus if that ends up to not be the problem in the end, what a massive waste of time.  You're still free to point and laugh.  :^P

If you have all sorts of files with stupid number filenames, start with those.  If you don't know what the file is, you don't want it.

If you think you might want it later, remove the files from your Downloads directory and save them in a separate folder on your drive somewhere (I keep a "Removed CC" folder in a backup section of my My Documents folder.  That way you can safely remove it, but not lose it completely.  Start by removing the files you don't "recognize" from the filenames, and see if your game works without them.

Here's how you cull 13GB of CC: Chuck it all. Then start adding back what you really want. Nobody could possibly want or need that much CC.

On a side note, how do you people manage to get that much CC, anyway? I do my best to go over 1GB, but I find most CC is eye-damagingly bad and must be destroyed. Have you people npo standards?

According to what you said in your original post, you haven't been doing a binary search.  You've been trying starting the game with different chunks of custom content in the folder, but you apparently have not been doing it in a logical, ordered fashion in order to identify which files are the problem.

It's possible, of course, that your start-up crashes and the inclusion of certain custom content are totally coincidental.  However, if the game starts fine every time without the Downloads folder, that screams "custom content problem" to me.   It's possible that this isn't an "every time" situation, though.  It was very hard to tell from your original post, and I have not gone back to reread since you divided it into paragraphs.

Finding solutions is rarely a pain-free experience.  Personally, I would be far more upset if I spent money on a new graphics card and still didn't solve the problem than I would be if I took the time to do a careful binary search and still didn't solve the problem.  I'd rather waste my time than waste my money.

With the amount of free cc out there right now there is no reason at all not to chuck your whole downloads folder and start over, with exception to uninstalling whatever necessary hacks prior to doing so. This should be your first step in eliminating bad actors.

Binary searches don't really take as long as you are afraid they will. You are narrowing by half every time, so it goes much more quickly than you would think. The only pain is starting the game every time. Do the search and rule it out, then people will start coming up with other ideas.

I am doing a binary search as I originally halved my beginning 60k.  I broke up the 60k worth of CC after I took out all the mods/hacks I could fine into 10k sections and then 5k sections and started adding them back in 5k chunks at a time.  Most of the time I have to half the 5k chunks because there's something still borked in there.  It's easier for me to scroll down 5k's worth of CC rather than say 30k at a time in order to find a possible culprit, so that's why I've done it this way.  It's just a little change to the binary search, but I originally halved them so I guess it still technically is as I continue halving when I find a problem.  I also started with the oldest CC first.  I've taken out about 300 possibly corrupt/broken files and put them in their own folder.  I have about 15k worth of CC left to put back in, so I have 1/3rd left to go.

I don't want to chuck all the CC and start over again.  Most of my SavedSims won't work if I do that and I'll spend hours downloading it all again.  I have removed a lot of the weird number files and other suspicious looking ones and so far have made it this far by doing that.  It's just frustrating and time consuming.

I know I have too much CC.  I want to get rid of a lot of it, but I need to know what it is first.  I don't want to accidentally delete something I really wanted or what not.

I am upset about the card . . .  I had forgotten about all the woes concerning nVidia and Sims 2.  It's my own stupid mistake and I'll probably have to buy another ATI card and just save up for it.  Maybe the card itself could be ruined, I don't know.  Cards can go bad even though they're rather new.  Some are bad out of the box.

Just follow jolrei's advice on culling your downloads.  If in doubt, back it up.
Have you taken a look at your event logs?  That is how I knew my brand-new harddrive was about to asplode.  Check out your Event Viewer to see what errors or warnings you might be getting.  With that much CC, you can bet some is outdated, conflicting, or just plain choking your system to death.  And you are right, the card could be bad.
Keep plugging away.  You'll eventually get to the bottom of it.

In the end, as long as you are testing bits and then clearing them, it still works. However, this method is taking you way more time than a standard binary search will. And really, there's no reason why you should even be looking at the file names while you're shuffling. Just rip half out. Test for crash. Move. Rip half out. Test. Move. Rip. Etc. When you get down to the last file, that's when you pay attention.

snowbawl:  I just took a look at the Event Viewer and noticed this very weird application error  The Source is Ci and the Category is Ci Service.  I have no idea what that is . . .  But my computer just spontaneously rebooted on me while the game was loading . . .  I came back up and it was gone and appeared to have restarted.  :^\  I have many of these "Ci Service" errors in the log and I wonder if they correspond with crashes of the game . . .  Too early to tell right now.  Right before the error is also shows Info that CI starts cataloging c:\system volume information\catalog.wci and then the error must be that it can't do that. 

Looking at the link Microsoft's Help & Support center provided I got this:  CI stands for Catalog Indexing.  Something is wrong with the this function in the OS apparently . . .  Is there a way I can turn this off or change when it does this?  Any ideas why this would be happening or what could be causing it?  If what I suspect is correct, it only seems to be doing this when the game is on.  I'm looking at the error help message and it says that the reason this happens is that the files in the listed directory might be missing from the index and I should do a manual scan.  WTF?  Why should I need to do this at all while my game is running?

I don't know if it was LiveUpdate or what also that also interfered . . .  I have changed the settings on many occasions for Windows not to automatically install updates but yet it keeps doing it.  :^[  It just updated and rebooted last night for example.

Zazazu:  If my method is taking longer and there's no advantage, then I'll just do the half method only for the rest of the content.  I'll have to throw it all in one folder first though before I go moving it in.  Folders shouldn't be interfering with anything right?  I know at one point certain CC couldn't be put in folders but I think that changed after Pets so that everything can be put in folders

Bah, server interruption...*shakes fist* forcing me to rewrite my post.

A quick google reveals that CI errors are produced when files can not be indexed (made available for quick viewing/finding), for various reasons.  These errors are sometimes linked to System Restore.  Without an Event ID, there is not much to go on.  If you feel like delving into it, google your EXACT error(s) and wade through the various tech forums.  You are not the first person to have this problem.  And, just a quick google with nothing really to go on turned up solutions and a metric crap-ton of information.  Your problem might very well have nothing to do with your new card or the game.

Also, yes, you can turn off your catalog indexing.  Go forth and Google.

I had a huge problem when I enabled indexing for the Windows XP Search function. Once I turned it off, the problems decreased. It still took a ton of registry cleaning to get everything working smoothly again as it was crapping all over it. But just disabling it was enough to stop the stupid random reboots while trying to run The Sims.

The key to keeping Windows running smoothly is to turn off anything it nags you to turn on.

I use Delphy's Download Organizer @ MTS2: http://nene.modthesims2.com/download.php?p&t=227925 (http://nene.modthesims2.com/download.php?p&t=227925). It's a good thing to have around because it gives good descriptions on the content, which helps if you want to rename a file to be more descriptive  :) Hope that helps!

The WinXP Search Function is evil. It serves no purpose you can't already use the puppy for (search companion, from My Computer) yet it burns system resources. Kill it. Even the IT at my company supported my right to kill it, and they generally don't like changing anything from the defaults.

Avi, if you really want to know if it's your PC or CC, just take the whole Downloads and Neighborhoods folder in EA Games and drag them to the Desktop. Now start the game and let the original neighborhoods regenerate and play them for awhile. If your game doesn't choke and die, your neighborhood or a piece of CC is definitely doing it. That will ease your mind about your PC. When you're ready to put your old stuff back, just delete the new Neighborhoods folder and move your two folders back and keep hunting through all that CC.

I turned off indexing and hopefully that may fix that error issue . . .  not sure if that was affecting how my computer was running or the game, but sure it didn't help.  I know my PC is probably slowly dying . . .  My floppy disk drive doesn't read disks anymore (hasn't for a long while), and my PS/2 port doesn't work so I had to buy a USB keyboard.  So it's probably just a matter of time.  So it wouldn't surprise me if something else on it is messed up . . .

I'm currently finishing the rest of my CC off with the binary method so we'll see how that goes.  I've already halved it once because it crashed on load with all of the remaining in there.  I managed to get to the neighborhood bin with half of it . . .  So it seems that CC may just be the culprit afterall.  Maybe the way it was set up before was fine, but now that I moved things around, I messed up some flimsy balance so it now won't work.  X^D  Thing is, when I installed those NGO drivers, I hadn't installed anything new that I could recall, and moving out the most recent stuff didn't help any.  So I don't understand why that upset some balance . . .  I thought maybe I broke my card or something.  :^\  It could be however that my old neighborhoods just got so badly corrupted as I've done many VBTs like deleting Sims from the bin, moving occupied lots to the bin and back before I know those were VBTs.  I haven't since learning that obviously.  Is there a list of VBTs you shouldn't do in Sims that the game allows you to do?  X^D  I need to educate myself if there are any others!

The big issue is definitely due to my CC, or so it seems.  However, the secondary issue of the nVidia BSOD may or may not have been resolved by uninstalling Norton (which I did last night) . . .  Too early to tell.

I have Delphy's Download Organizer and I used it a few times, but I prefer Clean Installer.  It's quicker to load especially with my large amount of CC, and I like the way it is set up better.  I use both though, and the EA made Content Manager one too, though that one doesn't like to work most of the time.

Thanks for all your help, everyone!  :^D  Will update again if I run into any new issues!  I think I just have to continue my long slow road of moving CC back and forth . . .