More Awesome Than You!

I patched to 1.4 yesterday. My computer's not the best model by any means, but up until yesterday's patching, I had no problems playing (a very ugly version of) the game; however, my computer now shuts itself down with no warning after a few minutes of gameplay. It doesn't seem to be getting overheated, and I didn't have the problem before. Could it be the patch, or would it be something else? If the patch might be the culprit, how could I go about unpatching this damn thing? I'm living abroad and hence had to rely on the bugged EA website download to get the game, so any advice would be really helpful. I wish it threw error codes or SOMETHING at me, but all it's doing is shutting down. I'm playing mod-free at the moment.

There's no way to "unpatch" a game.

Instead, you have to uninstall the entire game and then reinstall and patch only to 1.3.

The 1.3->1.4 patch doesn't actually change anything. 1.4 is 1.3 with less errors if it glitches out and doesn't install properly.

I patched to 1.4 yesterday (had 1.3) and my game just froze (not at 1 am) - so frozen that I had to restart my comp using the button. I'm no help, SuperRi, but please know that you are not alone with problems after the latest patch.

I appreciate the replies. I figured there was no way to just remove one patch, but I've never had these sorts of problems before, so I figured if there WAS a way, you guys would be the ones to know. I also realized that 1.4 isn't any different from 1.3, but this problem has just started after patching yesterday, so I'm not sure what else it could be. I used to be able to run Sims 3 for hours upon mindless hours without any computer burn out, so five minute shut downs is a new development.

My game just froze *again*! But Pescado just put up a new version of AM, I'm going to try it and suggest you do too.

I haven't patched but I had the same problem and did extensive searching on the game booting the computer all of a sudden (I had played for several weeks with no problems and could play any other game without the computer booting).  I discovered that I had Windows update loading optional updates and one of them happened to be for my video card.  When I checked the Nvidia control panel Sims 3 was one of the few games listed to run only "fair" because of 2D directional movement or some such and to turn down visual effects.  I tried that but no go.  I also tried to turn off the advanced rendering and switching screen resolutions.

I finally read the post here about the fpslimiter so decided to check to see what my game was running by turning FPS on and found that it was hitting in the 80s and 90s consistently.  I downloaded the 3booter and the fpslimiiter and rolled back my driver and my system hasn't crashed since.  I have no idea what actually fixed it - it could have just been me smacking it a few times or maybe the moon was full - but maybe those are some things you can look at.

I feel your pain though.  I have never had so much trouble playing a game as I have this one.

Until patch 1.4 I've never had problems with unsuspected quitting game.
Now, incl new AW and Patch 1.4 the game crashes between hours 00.01 and 00.30
And this several times.

My game started to crash too, and it never did before. Apparently, jfade's sim can't go buy groceries, HELL NO.
My "fix" is: save > Edit Town > Choose Household > select the same household > reload > save again. No idea why, but the crash goes away, at least for a while.

So far, the only crash it didn't solve was when the IndieStone driver popped up the info that Annan and Tsenatserix were married; this apparently is too much to bear for the engine. I had to make them break up, to have the crash go away.

I downloaded the latest AWmod, but now my game reacts even stranger.
One sim, who talked to the Grimreapoer knows now 2 Grimreapers !?
In an other familie I get the wrong events, opportunities in the Job,
the Militarist get events from the Science-career and the Hospital-worker get events from the Athletic-career.
Is this again a memory failure, like reported in sims2.

Same here. After patching the game to v.1.4.6 it started that CTD-thing. I tried to run it without mods and it crashed again. Since I am running Sims 3 on WinXP 64 I changed to another partition (my pc is set up as multi-boot) with Win XP 32 SP2 installed and got the same results after updating to 1.4.6. It's crashing again and again on both Systems which makes the game unplayable for me. It either happens at save (instead of error 12 or 13 code which I have seen a lot in the past now it crashes to desktop) or it happens somewhere within the game most likely when I move the mouse (i.e. the camera) fast and over a longer distance. 

I am also having a strange problem. My screen goes from light to dark after about five minutes. It then goes from dark to light a few minutes after that. All of a sudden, my monitor says it is going to sleep, and then I have to fully shut it off using the button. With the 1.3 patch it did the light to dark thing, but it never fully shut everything down. Now with 1.4 I literally get about ten minutes of gameplay. Is anyone else having this problem? Any suggestions?