More Awesome Than You!

I went out and purchased the darn thing, tried to install it, got a message to patch the base game first so clicked OK on that, then installed Ambitions. Fired it up and looked around. Map view was fine and could enter buy and build, but every time I tried to select a pre-made household I got a CTD. No error messages, just BAM, looking at my desktop.

It turns out that adding the EP02 to your windows DEP list stops this from happening...just thought I'd pass that tidbit along. Worked for me, anyway.

From what I'm hearing people are actually having little to no issues with ambitions. No bugs, no nothing. So while crashing to desktop sucks, at least it's not widespread and you can prevent it.

What is the DEP list?

What, you don't feel like Googling it?

From Microsoft: "Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help prevent malicious code from running on a system. In Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, DEP is enforced by hardware and by software."
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352

I have Windows 7, but it's the same idea. There are instructions for editing your files to add it on this site, I believe, and at MTS. And I think Rainbow Brite added the instructions to her space on the TSCExchange site because I saw it after Googling DEP myself.

A relatively easy fix after a frustrating 4 crashes in a row. So yeah, could be worse.

Thanks Tangie. I'd completely forgotten I'd set that.

I just got a crash after looking through the catalog and placing objects I wanted to check out. ;-; I'll try this.

I spent half an hour trying to figure out what was crashing my game before I checked here, and duh, adding it to the DEP list fixed it.  So thanks for the reminder and saving me god knows how many more hours of frustration.

I have Ambitions running on my Windows 7 x64 PC without issue thus far. I applied the 4Gb patch at the outset and have never needed to bother about with DEP.

The first thing I tried was to use CFF Explorer to increase the 2GB limit on the EP02 exe file, but that didn't fix the problem for me. Not until I added the EP02 file to my DEP exception list in my Windows system folder did my crashing stop. I'm using a laptop with Windows 7, an i7 processor, and have 6 GB of RAM.

Glad to hear you are using CFF it was the only program I could find which almost stopped all DEP crashes.  EA just found out and are trying to fix ASAP.  Since many many customers are complaining it is the only game which crashes.  The most bought Windows 7 is 64 bit and EA is clueless.

Just another data point: Two days ago my system ran the base game + WA just fine. A fresh completely vanilla install of retail base+WA+Ambitions led to game freezes every few seconds and crashes after a few minutes.
 
No CC, not even EA store items, no mods at all, started completely fresh with a brand new family in Twinbrook. Even moved all the previous user data, caches, and saves etc out of the My Documents folder, so anything in there is also freshly created.
 
The DEP trick did nothing for me. Tweaking the Ambition executable to use 4GB on my Vista x64 system seems to have cured the crashes, but the freezes remain. For example, with my sim just sitting in the library reading a skill book, approx every 5 seconds the game freezes for 3 or 4 seconds. This is a complete freeze, even the trees and other graphical effects halt. Lots of audio problems too, such as popping and dropping sounds, but I suppose this is likely tied to the same issue.
 
I'm going to try a new game in Sunset Valley next, but not holding out much hope for improvement.

This is an old issue. There's probably a sim somewhere causing this. Resetsim would help, but there's no way to know which one it is. Once AM is updated, try resetworld. It worked for me.

I'm curious why the DEP fix would work for anyone.  By default, Windows installs with DEP set to, "Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only."  The default option should only apply DEP to Windows system binaries.  Any other executable, including Sims 3, should be unaffected.  For those where the DEP setting made any difference, was your DEP setting different than default to begin with?

Well, that's an excellent question.

Back when everyone was having so much trouble with the game crashing, someone (I believe this originated on the EA BBS) reported that changing the setting to allow DEP for everything but the EA executables seemed to fix their crashing, so many of us followed suit and it seemed to help. But of course every time there is an expansion, the new exe file is going to have to be added to the list. If I have time I may experiment by changing the setting back to essential Windows programs and services and see what happens.

This is the same thing my brother said when I told him about it awhile back. I never did mess with it, either. I still get the Access Violation exceptions after crashes, but it's not too often. I remember reading something before, though, about how those crashes are actually the result of bad programming on EA's part. Like mine always says "ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x00000000" and according to what I read, that 0x00000000 address is supposed to be only used by Windows and when another program tries to access it, it stops it, causing the exception. Apparently the same problem exists with Spore. I'm not sure if it's right or not since I'm not an expert, but it does kind of make sense.

Ach, this DEP voodoo magic didn't work for me. If I wasn't so damned tired from work, I'd experiment all night.
Using regular XP, by the way. herp a derp.

I found that the launcher loads store items in a snap! Before Ambitions, it would load 3 items and then freeze.
EA did something right this time perhaps?

My report:

Yesterday I patched, took out AM etc, made a test hood and played a random household for a bit.

Today I bought the EP, installed the EP, opened my test hood whereupon I was asked if I wanted to put in the new lots so I did, no problems there. As soon as the game opened up the household it crashed to desktop.

I added the EP to the DEP list, and have now been able to play for quite a while with no problems.

(For the record, I'm using store-bought copies of the base game, WA, HELS as well as Ambitions.)

I never had an issues with crashing. Alls I did was patch, install Ambitions, remove AM, change other mods to new structure, then play. I can even load up old AwesomeMod saves without hassle.

This is likely to only be an issue for people who changed their DEP settings for EP01. Once you make changes to add EA executables as exceptions, each new expansion will have to be added to the list. I am still hoping, sometime this weekend, to return the settings to the default and see if I have any problems with crashing.

How does one run the game without AM installed? I don't want to use a crack on my lovely babies.

...
No, I won't buy it.

I use the Nrass no cdmod and it works just fine when am isn't avaliable.  Just drop in packages folder.

Ah, m'yes. Got it to work using Nraas' No CD. But despite what other people say, I am getting the worst performance I have ever seen out of TS3. Now, my computer isn't very powerful. In fact, it just passes the Recommended hardware. But pre-Ambitions I could play with my settings on Medium-High with little to no stuttering or hiccups.

Now with Ambitions installed and running (AND no mods installed), it's near unplayable. Fucks sake.
Fiddled with some options, now, for no apparent reason at all, it's running fine again. CTDs are still roaming mystically though. Completely random (and common) actions can give me a crash, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

I've tried DEP, CFF, putting the game on my 'safe' list for comodo, making my game run as administrator, also trying to make it run as XP system pack 2. Took out all CC, pretty much everything besides a complete reinstall.. Which I have a feeling will end up tomorrows venture. My game is crashing straight to desktop, no message, black screen, etc. Oh! I'm also using 3booter and limiter. Anyone else having this kind of shitty luck?

When entering a lot? Or is it when the game is loading?

Also, my sim can't take a fucking piss without the game crashing.

They don't have to be doing any certain thing. It seems to range anywhere from 5-10 minutes though.. Oddly, it crashes quicker without any mods. It could possibly be when leaving lots, but I'm not 100% sure on that because of how random it feels. Going on my third day of googling for answers..

I've got a brand new install of S3, with HELS and Ambitions. The only content I have installed is official EA store stuff, via a modified launcher (using the instructions on this site).
I have had a few crashes, not too many (maybe half a dozen in the 15 or so hours play time). However, I recently had my Sim visit Egypt. I have a save from before I travelled, and one from after. So far, my game has crashed 3 times since visiting Egypt, all within about 5 minutes of loading up the new new area. I have done the same thing each time: Travelled to Egypt, gone to the market, and bought loads of stuff (books, cameras, food etc.) It's just a straight CTD - no errors - and it happens suddenly (no slowdown in game, and the hard drive isn't working any harder). It's like I just Alt-F4'd out. My DEP settings are the default to Windows (running Win 7 x64 by the way).

I'll try using CFF Explorer and changing the settings, see if that helps.

Edit: Since I used CFF Explorer, I have had no CTDs at all.

Reinstalling was no help whatsoever. Ugh.

I also had frequent CTDs on my w7-machine (with all the expansions and the stuff pack installed).  FPS-limiter was the only thing that helped, in my case. Now the game seems stable.

Thanks for the suggestion, but if I recall those previous threads, the symptoms were slightly different. Sims and cars etc were frozen, but the ambient graphical effects such the SpeedTree movement still continued. My game was completely frozen. I tried your advice anyway, using Twallan's SuperComputer to reset all. No difference, same freezes and still getting crashes.
 
However, I finally noticed that the Ambitions installer messed up. Before installing the EP, it checks and updates the base game. But it either doesn't check if WA needs updating or the check failed because WA was still back at its original version number. Naturally, that didn't work well with the other up-to-date bits. I then reinstalled from scratch, patching manually at each step, and the crashes are gone. No DEP fiddling or 4GB tweak needed.
 
No crashes, but I was still getting frequent freezes. Updated the nVidia video drivers and those are gone too.

The DEP thing fixed it after I reinstalled. I don't know why it wouldn't take the first time but... Hey, as long as it works!

I'm still experiencing crashes after the latest patch and then Ambitions on XP (32-bit), even after trying every suggestion. It's incredibly frustrating that it seems completely random and neither the event log nor the game's crash logs tell anything useful.

Running without mods or a completely new profile directory doesn't help either. And as no other games I play ever crash, I can't blame it on misconfiguration or hardware error.

Does anyone else have a suggestion, other than waiting for a patch that hopefully solves this?

Terr, did you rename the Sims 3 folder in my documents?  Profile does not specify anything specific to me.  But any old pre Ambitions crap in that directory needs to be destroyed (or prevented from being read) so ambitions can regenerate it's own data.  Simply bringing in old saves can be buggy as hell, so imagine the CTD fun in store if an old my documents folder was used.

If that's not the problem and you've done both CFF explorer and DEP, a full reinstall is all I can recommend.  Again put mods, sims my documents folders and other crap you want into another directory and reinstall the whole thing fresh.

I've reinstalled two times now. At the last reinstall I renamed the profile folder and started a new save game. I found out that the base game works fine, and that it starts crashing after installing World Adventures.

I'm going to do one last reinstall skipping WA, start fresh over again and let Amibitions generate the profile directory, like you suggest. For extra thoroughness, I'm going to seek out left over registry entries as well.

*edit*
No dice. Base game works fine, Ambitions makes the game crash around the 15 minute mark (like WA)

I would assume everyone's already done this, but getting rid of bad CC fixed my crashing problem. It was specifically the creepy TSR doll that attaches itself to Sims3packs.

Another thing to look out for is the need for a fresh reinstall.  My computer over the weekend had completely died (vid card blew up on me), so I took over my husband's computer (runs so much better than mine anyway with a better vid card and proc.), and installed the base game and all EPs.  The game let me create a family, build a lot, edit some cloths.  But when it came to running the game (sims interacting, saving), it would crash over and over again.  I tried to the DEP fix, that didn't work and then I completely uninstalled the game and reinstalled it, it was the reinstall that ultimately fixed my problems :) 

I installed everything from fresh, and it doesn't seem to have crashed - that is, Sims 3, Adventures, Ambitions, the Kitchen sink and even those small teaspoons you get at the bottom. Could be that its patched to the latest to the latest version of ambitions however  ::)

   Hi, IgnorantBliss lead to this thread. I did my TS3+WA+AMB works (with Vista 64-bits) instaling them at a custom install path, like at Skadi's thread:  http://sublimesims.net/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=ae9d09f0a4922de84e94c966a72074f4&topic=1747.0 (http://sublimesims.net/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=ae9d09f0a4922de84e94c966a72074f4&topic=1747.0), them followed Rainbow Brite's tutorial at MTS: http://www.modthesims.info/member.php?u=3811336 (http://www.modthesims.info/member.php?u=3811336) (see her journal).

   Hope this helps.  ::)

So the game crashes over and over, and Event Viewer gives me this nice message that:

Currentgame.sims3\traveldb.package in the hash map cannot be updated properly because a "device attached to the system is not functioning". 

Usually if I look into the current game folder (obviously when the game is not running), it is always empty.  Now it is full of crap.  Is anyone familiar with this message/error and know how to remedy?

I've got the same error since patching to 1.12, latest Awesome mod installed.  I played the game yesterday for several hours without any crashes.  Today, I'm getting a crash at the exact same spot - around 9 o'clock at night, one Sim is chatting on the computer, the other is searching the galaxy with the telescope.  Does anyone know what the traveldb.package does?

Modifying to add:  it's not the telescope.  I deleted everything in my CurrentGame.sims3 folder and had the other Sim quit the computer.  It broke, and while the repairman was working on it, the game crashed again.

I was having CTD's and error 12's and 13's recently. I tried a clean game with no relief. I finally tried the CFF explorer fix and haven't had a crash since. I'm running windoze 7 pro 64 bit.
http://www.jaloonz.com/2008/04/enabling-large-address-aware-for-games.html

Darn, could someone tell me what is making me crash even after a re-install?
I cleared out all documents/program files for TS3 that I could find, and started fresh with unpatched basegame.
Runs okay (5 minute test) but as my basegame gets more patched it leads to these under-a-minute CTD's. Something crucial is missing if the game cant even survive a minute in a new town.
patch 1.12.70.006002 instantly set it off again.
Text says DasmX86Dll.dll not found, but I do have this in my system 32 folder.

Update: It only happens when I unpause. I can zip around just fine while paused.

Here's the crash text.

I've got 32 bit Vista with 3 GB RAM, and I *think* this fix is primarily for 64-bit?  However, there's an old MS hotfix for virtual graphics mapping via that link.  There's also an update for my graphics card that I should install first.  Plus, it looks like there's a new update version & Awesomemod.  I guess we'll see if something helps?  It's one of those unrepeatable errors (I hate those - I report software bugs at work, and anything I can't repeat makes me crazy - I *know* it's borked, but I can't prove it), so the only way to know it's fixed is if it doesn't happen.

There are further instructions for folks running Vista x86 (32 bit). You could certainly attempt the fix and see if it offers any relief. Make sure to keep a backup of you original .exe. Also, have you tried running the game clean? No mods or CC.

      Hi, dears! I recently patched my game and merged my stuffs, but not Awesome, my hacks (Rainbow Brite, Anach and Chaavik hacks)  and the default things. When I'm at the shopping mode my game is crashing - it freezes and nothing makes it works again. I pressed the windows key, the Esc key, prayed for mercy and even did some killing threats, but nada. Anybody has this problem? Sorry if this isn't the right thread, but my problems began after the patch, oh gosh, I hate patches! Thanks in advance.

If it's happening in buy mode it's most likely a bad custom content item that no longer works with Ambitions.

If you truly have zero custom content and only Awesomemod and those few hacks then go back to those sources, check on their compatibility with Ambitions and re-download the newest versions.

I had major problems with CTDs since update 1/14, even though I did the DEP and CFF explorer tips to stop it. I have been using FordGT90Concept (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=410418) Large Address Aware (LAA) and have been able to at least play for more than 2 hours. Maybe it can help?

   Thanks for the quick answer, Motoki. I'm an obssessed being who names her downloads, so, I can track them. I'll try to redownload or delete them. Thanks again.

I've been having shitty CTD happenings, just like everyone else here. I patched to 1.14 with base game, updated awesomemod, loaded up the game. Everything worked fine, it loaded and I went into my neighborhood. I grabbed the family I had been yearning to shove into a house and went to purchase/place them in one. The game shows that slow loading circle quite a while, then crashes to the desktop. No error warnings or anything, of course.

I'm using a pretty shitty laptop, but it's played the Sims 3 fine for over a year now (on full in-game graphics ,too). It's a Windows Vista, with 3 GB of RAM.

I tried the DEP trick---didn't work. Tried deleting my excess cache files---didn't work. I did download the LAA and set it to use more RAM, as well as the extra steps Vista users needed to take. I loaded the game up again and it crashed to the desktop at the same point as before. So of course, I tried again, but first ran the LAA and saw that the section was set back to false (per default), and not true as I thought I put it. So now I'm loading the game up again in hopes that it'll actually work, but I'm doubting it.

Anybody know of anything else I can do? I couldn't even tell you if it happens in buy mode cause I can't make it into a house, though I'm pretty sure it's not bad CC. The game actually didn't work before when I patched it until I realized I still had an old Indie Stone mod package.

Seriously? You're pretty sure it's not bad cc, but you'er the type who left old, outdated Indie Stone in? Do yourself a favor. Take out all cc. See if it runs. Then add back in non-mod cc, see if it runs. Then verify that the mods you have are compatible with the current patch, then see if it runs.

Notice the bolded part? It's kind of important.

Indie Stone slipped my mind, I honestly didn't even think I still had it in there since it really didn't serve me much purpose with awesomemod. It was the only bad, and conflicting CC.
The only other real game changing mods I had were slider hacks, and yes, I made sure they were compatible/updated.

Anyway, it seems to be relatively stable now with the LAA, so I'm hoping this will offer a fix for now.

It's not just game changing mods that can cause game problems after patching.  Regular CC (hair, clothing, objects, etc) can cause problems as well.  Which is what Zazazu tried to tell you.