More Awesome Than You!

This may not be the place to ask but I can't deal with other forums.  I've been having a couple of issues since I patched to 6.5 (I'm also running the test version of AM):  My game keeps crashing and the computer gives me a notification that it's DEP doing it.  I have Windows Vista.  I don't have any stuff packs, I have all the EPs except Generations (because EPs are shit until AM compatible)...I also have Moryrie's Store Content packages and a few body/face sliders.  No other mods.  My caches are cleared and the content I have has been decrapified.  I set up my DEP to bypass Sims 3 stuff months ago and this is the first time it's started acting up.  A couple of days ago, I got a notice to update my EADM and now that icon turned in to something called Origin.  Could this be the cause of my problem?  I Googled some solutions but everything that comes up is related to the base game, from when it first came out.  Can anyone help?

I set up my DEP to bypass Sims 3 stuff months ago and this is the first time it's started acting up.

I find it suspect that you had access to generations months ago. Or perhaps you don't know what you're doing? I wonder which is more likely.

Well, that's kind of why I'm asking for help.  I don't have Generations so I can't go into the Game/Bin folder for it...I only have the latest patch and I'm not sure if that's affecting things in any way. 

Check facts first, shout second, shouty vole.

The 1.22 patch changed which .exe runs Sims 3, so you may need to fix DEP to work with TS3W.exe as well.  You didn't say whether or not you had patched to 1.22, but you did say you were running test AM, and as that is for 1.22, it seemed safe to make that leap.

I also experienced DEP related CTDs despite having dealt with DEP, and was completely baffled. As it turns out, Moryrie's StoreStuffMadeShiftable.package was the culprit for me. Not sure why that happened, but a little voodoo never hurts.

Only use that package if you have an override folder to put it in, or all the store objects.

I do have something else in the works for people who decrapify, or don't have all the objects based on this (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,19875.0.html). When this will be released.. well.. I honestly cannot say.

And it would have been nice if you'd told me you had that problem, so I could possibly find what went wrong as I have not experienced that issue.

I don't have the StoreStuffMadeShiftable.package...it may be something else?


Thanks! I just added the TS3W.exe and I'll test the game out to see if it was the culprit.  I am running version 1.22...I referred to it as 6.5 because that's what shows up in my launcher. 


I wasn't aware any of your packages could have triggered DEP.  I just mentioned them because they're one of the few mods I use.  If it turns out to be TS3W.exe responsible for the DEP, all of your store content packages (1 through 9) should be fine.

I was not referring to you Val. I was referring to Roobs.

DEP can cause problems for quite a lot of stuff. The problems of DEP far outweigh the slight benefits. I'm sure most people using it have no idea what it even does and the likelihood of your system being compromised in this way is very slim. Why not just leave it at it's default setting (for essential windows programs and services only). Then there wont be any issues.

Thanks!  Turns out it was TS3W.exe because my game's been running smoothly since I added it.


Normally, I wouldn't touch it because I don't consider myself computer savvy.  The reason I got involved is because Sims 3 got DEP related crashes when I had it set to the essential windows programs/services.  I read some tutorial online which suggested turning DEP on for all programs and specifying which ones to bypass.

DEP shouldn't be interfering with Sims in its default setting. Are you sure they were DEP related crashes, or just one of the many other crashes. These computer thingies aren't all that tricky. I've managed to have Sims working without hassle on 4 different PC with major hardware differences, from single cores with 2gig RAM to quad core with HT and 12gig, plus a few in-between. The most common issues for Sims that I notice come down to several issues.

1. Outdated or uncommon hardware with lack of driver support. How many people barely scrape in with old hardware, or even unsupported laptops, and wonder why things don't work right (I have a friend that does just that).
2. Lack of RAM (Sims likes to have plenty. Id say comfort zone would be 6 gig total RAM, with 4 of that for Sims and 2 for Windows. Obviously with a 32bit OS is going to limit you to about half that in usable memory. While you may say "I have 4 gig", you are actually limited to around 3gig of actual usable memory and windows itself needs some of that.. At the end of the day, your game probably only has 2 out of 4 available.
3. Bad custom content. There is a shit-load of that out there. Even when it looks good, it doesn't mean it works good. Which is why these days I limit my CC to essential stuff by authors I trust to produce quality items.
4. Outdated mods. So many people fail to update their tweaks, tunings and script mods after a patch. This isn't limited to Sims, but every modded game.
5.  NOCD cracks. The .exe variety. These things are horrible. Most are emulation of protection, they use more memory, they are prone to memory leaks, they cause problems with DEP and many people don't even install the correct version for their game.
6. Reboot your PC. I noticed that even with plenty of Memory, if you don't reboot your PC every couple days, Sims will start giving saving issues (error 12) and slowdowns.
7. Corrupt towns and Sims. Played a town too long, through several patches and with lots of mods. Then this is likely to become an issue at some point. Save corruption due to mods isn't just limited to Sims 3 either. It's quite a common issue in modding circles.

The problem with the DEP and UAC, is that they both cause issues, and the sort of internet nasties people are more likely to get usually come from email, IM or websites. For the average gamer, you are better off without them. The other problem with DEP (and life in general), is that someone says they had to whitelist an app to fix DEP crashes. Suddenly everyone else that hears that thinks they might have the same issue, but not realising the default DEP settings prevent this. Then they turn their DEP on, creating more problems than they solve, and find that its working, where in actual fact it's probably more due to the reboot or just the shear randomness of most crashes giving the placebo effect. Before you know it, someone has added this info to a guide, and you have all these people hopping on the band-wagon for a miracle cure. I've found with many different games over the years, pretty much any custom .dll that gets loaded into memory along with the game exe will cause DEP issues if you turn it on, even with the whitelist.

That's my two cents. Generally I find Sims 3 to be quite a stable game for both myself and my Wife, but it's been a learning experience along the way, that is for sure.

I've definitely had DEP related crashes after installing each EP. It basically made the game unplayable, because as soon as I'd unpaused it it crashed. I don't remember fiddling with any DEP settings prior to that, including changing it from the default, but it's possible my ex-husband who built my computer had done it originally. The last time the crash happened after installing Generations (and the patches), my computer actually helpfully suggested adding the game to my DEP list (in a message in a pop-up window).

The reason you get a DEP crash after installing a new EP, is the game uses a different .exe to launch. So each EP/SP .exe needs to be added to the DEP whitelist. If DEP. If your DEP wasn't enabled, you wouldn't have a list to add it to in the first place. Easy to tell though. Just press Windows Key + Pause Break (Or right click my computer and click properties). Then under the advanced system properties (Advanced tab), you have a settings button, and within the settings window is your Data Execution Prevention tab. By default the top option (Turn on DEP for essential Windows Programs...) is selected. In this configuration you won't need to use the whitelist to add each .exe everytime you install an EP/SP.

If this were the case, many people wouldn't know about the existence of DEP in the first place.

The whitelist is only enabled if you turn on DEP for ALL programs, which isn't the default setting. Try it yourself. There is no whitelist access while at it's default setting, that is because only Windows is protected by DEP, everything else is ignored for compatibility. Often Techs or Tech Savvy will enable this setting for that small gain in protection that it provides the average user. For most people this wont be an issue, but when you start modding games, or using cracks or game trainers and such, DEP can get in the way.

Of course I did try it myself, as my game was crashing on unpause with the default setting enabled.
Enabling the whitelist and adding the TS3blah.exes to it solved the problems completely.

Not sure if it's DEP or not, but since Generations I have been getting "Sims 3 has stopped working and needs to close" every couple of hours. Now, I never had this error ever before Generations. Plenty of CTD's, buckets in fact. But never that.
Crashing has been thankfully minimal this past year, until Generations.

I have added TS3W and TS3EP04 to DEP. And every single executable from every pack.
I am just going to remove everything from DEP, do it again, reboot and see where that takes me.

But something fishy IS going on though. I have this process licked normally. And it's not ram, that's only averaging about 2.5 on task manager. Sigh. It's not like the EP even added anything substantial to the game for all this chaos. :/

I'm not doubting what you are saying, but essentially what you have done is Enable DEP for everything, only to disable it again by adding a whitelist entry for TS3blah.exe. This seems a little odd, as the default setting shouldn't be affecting Sims in the first place. I'm wondering if it was originally somehow set to AlwaysOn instead of OptIn (Default), and changing it to the whitelist approach will have set it to OptOut. It may depend on your original system configuration.

FYI, you change DEP settings quicker by typing "bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff" in a elevated (run as admin) command prompt, then reboot. Replace AlwaysOff with AlwaysOn, OptIn or OptOut which are the 4 available options. For those unsure what their current DEP is set to, you can run "wmic OS Get DataExecutionPrevention_SupportPolicy" at the prompt. It will display a number according to the list here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912923

The Stopped working message is just another CTD, just windows caught it and displayed a nice message. If you have had buckets of CTDs before generations, then I'd be inclined to think you have CC, Town, Sim or Memory issues. Testing for either can be a pain, and if you're like me, you'd probably prefer to think it's something else and not bother going through all the testing to find out :P

tizerist, have you tried the crash log analyzer at MTS?  I've had it give me false positives (said it was custom content and then unknown when it was actually Sims 3 being grumpy I had set XP to boot with /3GB) but otherwise it has been accurate.

Yeah, I was aware of the reason I needed to add a new .exe to the list after each EP. I was only surprised to hear that, by default, this shouldn't be necessary, since I don't remember changing the default settings originally. But if you're saying that's the case, then the only explanation I can think of is my ex-husband who built the computer and installed the Windows had changed that setting. I don't have access to my game computer at the moment, but as soon as I do, I'm going to change it back to the default setting.

I have had CTD's due to low RAM before the Generations patch but I know that I get a little, yellow, triangle icon with an exclamation point when those happen.  Until I added the recent .exe a few days ago, my computer was giving me notices (in the bottom right corner) about it being DEP related and I was crashing within 10 minutes of loading the game.  Now that I fixed that issue, I'm back to having my RAM related CTD's, every few hours.

Speaking of RAM...does anyone here have experience with using ReadyBoost to alleviate some of the pressure Sims 3 puts on RAM? 

^^ GameBooster is highly recommended. Strips your computer to the bone to free-up everything for the game.
I got something called Tune Up Utilities today, and it stopped quite a few unnecessary processes. About 6 or 7, which is always welcome.

And no, I haven't tried the crash analyzer. I'll check it out thanks.

I used to stuff around with tools like this back when I had a single core and was trying to get every ounce of free memory and cpu, and in the end I made myself a custom batch script to shutdown my own list of stuff. Since multi-core systems with oodles of RAM, its really became pointless.

Gamebooster is simply a tool for temporarily turning off background services that hog system resources. You wont see any FPS boost, the most you will reclaim is a small amount of memory (at the most a few hundred Mb on a fully loaded system). If you have a system with limited memory, then it's very unlikely it's going to make that much difference anyway due to the small amount of memory reclaimed, and if you have a system with lots of memory, then you wont need it. Before you "highly recommend" it. Check out some reviews and actual tests of this software from known forums, not the reviews on dodgy fake paid review sites. You can also test it yourself by looking at your available physical memory and CPU usage (in task manager) before and after using it and then tell people the real difference it made for you.

My opinion is this kind of software is mostly pointless placebo software, similar to those RAM management programs that claim to free up your system RAM, but at the end of the day do nothing (or make things worse). Back when I was working in a Tech room of a PC store, I had a client who would constantly install loads of different "Booster" software on his system (Usually full of spyware). He would always complain his system was running like crap, so I would clean out all the nasties, and dodgy software, then within a few weeks it was back. All this crap actually used up more RAM and CPU time than not having it in the first place, but he would insist it helped. You can find all sorts of stuff, from modem boosters, game boosters, ram booster, you name it. Along with each of these is a dozen so-called review sites with 10/10 stars or such. It's all crap.

Not quite sure what sites you've been browsing, but my recommendation comes from having used it for around 18 months.
And it frees up alot of unnecessary  RAM, as much as 300mb on occasion, enough to be a significant help.
That's not placebo, Task Manager and Gamebooster show the same numbers. It works.

What I'm saying is that a few hundred Mb of RAM is hardly worth the time, as it will most likely get used up by something else right away, and be unlikely to give you any performance gain. The way Windows works is to shift what it can't fit into memory to your swap file, located on your HDD. With a limited amount of RAM, it is likely this swap is already being utilised by something, and as soon as you free up RAM, its getting allocated more RAM. For the most part, windows handles memory management quite well, as long as you close down the constant memory hogs while gaming such as your Web Browser. Even so, Sims by default will use up to 2gig if you have it, and with a tweaked ini I've seen it use twice that on an older game. If you have 2gig or less, its likely you are already swapping to HDD and getting excessive disk usage and game slowdown. If you have somewhere between 2-4gig, that 300mb is going to make such a small difference it will be barely noticed. The biggest performance gain on a low end system will probably come from CPU usage, and any background task 99% of the time, shouldn't be using much CPU (under 5%), or it's not working right.

As for reviews I've looked at, most consist of forums of popular hardware enthusiast sites, as I've not managed to find a legit review site that I'd trust to give an unbiased review, and offer any real world facts. Like FPS, Memory usage and the likes. From what I've read, no one has seen any real difference, and some have claimed that "Game Booster" has actually caused more issues than it's fixed. Some have recommended using alternatives such as EndItAll2 or Smartclose.

The placebo comes from "I think it works better, so it must", and without actual numbers, it's most likely what it comes down to. Similar to the RAM boost software I was mentioning in my previous post. The thing is, these types of software have been around Since I remember, and people don't like being told they don't work. As for your software, I'm not saying it doesn't work, as I'm sure it does what it says when it comes to closing services and the likes, but it's the performance gain which I'm still yet to see any hard numbers on, and even so, I'd think it likely the results would be negligible. It's certainly not the first of its type, and wont be the last.

The truth is, there is no magic software that can make your PC awesome. The best tweaks are to not install crap you don't need, update your drivers and keep your system clean. If you have reached the stage where you are hoping that RAM management software will work, then it's probably time for an upgrade.