More Awesome Than You!

The title is fairly straightforward. I can run Sims with a fairly chunky amount of CC on high settings without any serious lag for an indefinite amount of time - but sooner or later I always get "The Sims 3 has stopped working" and has to close and blah blah. Now, since I don't have any problems actually running the game, so to speak, I'm reluctant to believe it's a problem with my machine. I've tried the usual suggestions, such as turning off DEP for Sims, shutting down all background tasks whilst I'm playing, playing without CC, but nothing seems to work. I have all EPs and I'm fully patched, so this problem is utterly infuriating. Has anyone suffered a similar problem and found a way around it, or does anyone have any useful suggestions as opposed to the nonsense I've been offered so far?

You might check your GPU temperature.

Might you have a mirror on your screen every time this happens? That was what was causing my CTDs, took me forever to realize it though. My graphics card was shit.

Didn't think to do that as I always use a laptop cooler. I've just checked now though using CPUID and my core temps are 43 and 45 degrees Celsius.


A mirror? I don't understand how it could be my graphics though when it runs great. My laptop's Windows 7 64-bit, so do you think running it in compatibility mode might solve the problem? I did try it briefly and it didn't crash, but then again it takes about two Sim weeks for it to crash usually so I'm still not convinced that's the answer.

Does it do it with both saved and fresh games?

Yup. Most of the time it will crash before I have time/think to save, so one time I saved after a few Sim days, shut down the game and rebooted, naively thinking that might make some difference, but it still crashed eventually. It's usually something between one and two Sim weeks into the game when it happens.

I save at least every 24 sim hours, more often if I've introduced or changed something significant. This is a pain in the ass with the long save times, but hey, better than Groundhog Day.

I have the same problem and these solutions seem to help:
- Turn off antivirus and firewall when you play
- Turn off network capabilities when you play, if you don't already.
The game still crashes for me, but only after a couple hours instead of minutes.

Edited because you already turned off DEP.

Also, from what I understand it appears to be a video driver issue so you might want to see if you can update your driver. Since the crashes come without warning, I keep my phone near to play games while I save every 20 min or so. :)

I already do all of that, too. Plus everything is up to date.

TS3 is also vicious about fragmenting hard drives. I defrag at least weekly.

Sometimes a game reinstall works. Maybe some files have got a bit corrupt or something, who knows, but as a last resort this can sometimes help. I have also recently downloaded a small custom world to see if that makes a difference. I've had CTDs with that, but knew some of them were my fault. e.g. I deleted the science rabbithole by accident, didn't realise what it was.

Oh, sigh. Just spent the last few hours defragmenting, uninstalling, reinstalling. I also cleaned out my CC and merged what I wanted to keep. But now I'm so sick of Sims for one night that I can't be bothered to play to test it out.

I've been having problems with crashes to desktop for a while too.  It started sometime not long before the last patch/pets, I remember hoping patching would fix it.  It comes and goes a bit, some times I save every few sim hours to be safe, while other times I can play for days with no trouble.
My computer certainly can't be described as low-end.  I have an excellent video card, plenty of ram, nicely defragmented hard drives with plenty of room; all new in august and carefully and cleanly assembled and installed by me, so no bundleware or other crap runs in the background.

I play very disinterestedly lately, so I haven't bothered to analyze the problem much.

So apparently not even an excellent and well managed computer can play TS3. EA insist on spending their time trying to devise new ways to get more money from the masses who are willing to pay for it, whilst adding in features no one has shown interest in (e.g. "social" features in Showtime), all the while ignoring the many problems the game already has. I play very disinterestedly too lately because I know my game's liable to shut down at any given moment. It's clear now why my interest in the game doesn't last for more than a few weeks at a time.

Try this:
http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Data_Execution_Prevention (http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Data_Execution_Prevention)
OK I now saw that you already did that, but check so you have the right game.exe in the list, I didn't and it gave me crashes suddenly.

Ah, thank you, now we seem to be getting somewhere. I have four xcpt files in my TS3 folder, the last two being identical bar the timestamps.

One of them displays this:
Which MTS tells me is a DEP error, despite having all and any Sims .exe files added to the list.

Another, this:
I have no idea what this one is referring to.

And the last two, this:
Which a quick Google search suggests may be linked to borked CC corrupting my save, which I don't understand since I fixed all of my CC, don't have much of it now anyway and I still get crashes even with new save files.

When I changed so that the file "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe" was the one named for DEP, then the crashes stopped.

Is that the only file you have named for DEP? Because I have that in the list, but I also have all the others too - TS3EP01.exe, 02, etc.

I may have some of the others named also, but not all of them. I have all eps and sps, but I did not list them all. I also use FPS-limiter. When the crashes happened for me, I first checked very thoroughly if something was up with the temperature and such, but there was no connection. As said, once I had the right file listed in DEP, they didn't happen anymore. I have a good comp and W7. Since the beginning of S3, the exe-file needs to be in DEP for it to run, without it, I get random CTD within 60 game minutes.

Hmmm... well one thing that happened for me is that at first the DEP prevention didn't work even though I added all the .exe files, so I just filled in the "essential Windows products and services only" bubble instead. It makes your computer a bit more vulnerable but if you think you're still having DEP problems its worth a shot.

Try playing without AM's story progression and see if that helps, it did for me recently. I usually don't play the game much but the last time I was I noticed I had story progression off, so about an hour after I turned it on I got a ctd and they kept coming. As soon as I turned of Am's and started using Ea's they went away. I don't know how important that is to you or not or if you're even using it but maybe that'll help.

I've tried everyone suggestions, but tonight it crashed within seconds of playing. I was able to fiddle around in buy mode for ages, but once I switched to live mode it only took seconds.

Incognito, I'm having the same exact problems. I've done everything I've seen suggested. It's definitely a Post-Pets-Patch problem because I never had any problems prior to the patch. Deleted all cache as usual, turned off the intarwebz, deleted the FeaturedItems thumbnails, changed the DEP for all Sims 3 games, defragged the machine and did a Clean Disk, and even downloaded Twallan's Master Controller to reset lots/sims/etc. I didn't have any sims congregating on any lots, but I reset things anyway. Shoot, I even reset the family that I play just in case. CRASH.

I don't run any mods except for Twallan's mod (which is updated for the 1.29 patch) and the newest AwesomeMod. Other CC that I have is just store junk, and I don't have a lot of that.

I made sure that my graphics were updated, all my Windows updates are up to date, and I honestly am at a loss. I've no idea what to try next. All other games that I play are fine, and Pets was running perfectly before this dumb patch. Immediately after I got the patch, the game began crashing.

And yes, just in case you're wondering, I DID remove mods and junk before I installed the patch, so I know that's not an issue.

I guess this is just another instance of EA PHAIL and another wait. I just hope that we don't have to buy the next EP to get a "fix" for this mess. Maybe I shouldn't say that; EA might get the lame-brain idea to try it. /sigh

I've found that turning off the internet connection from the gaming computer has resolved both my crashing issues and my lagging issues. I also don't have the featured items folder repopulating itself any longer. YMMV.

Turning off the internet and deleting the FeaturedItems folder has seemed to help some. I tried every fix that I could find on EA's forums (including changing the DEP for all Sims 3 games, defragging which I already do regularly, cleandisking, deleting cache which I always have done before playing, updating drivers that needed updating, etc.), and nothing worked for me. Sadly, I'm not the only one who has tried the suggestions and still had crashing as a result. I had to wipe the game from my computer, reinstall and avoid the 1.29 patch, which is perfectly all right with me because it means I can play.

Now the game works perfectly fine--no freezing, no lagging, no shutting down. Unfortunately, that means that I can't use AM until EA releases another patch and Pes updates again.

Incognito, are you playing in windowed mode? I run TS3 on a W7 64b system with low-level nVidia video cards and 8GB of RAM, always windowed on a second monitor. The game began crashing randomly after latest patch. An apparently stable solution is to set compatibility properties of TS3W.exe to "Disable visual themes" and "Disable desktop composition" in the configuration area, plus "Run as administrator" in privilege level area.

I did run CLA, Dashboard, RigFixer just in case, manually tested most recent .package additions and updated mods, all to no avail until I tried the compatibility settings yesterday evening. So far, the settings above seem to have solved the random crashing and freezing, with only one stall that lasted half a minute or less in the most problematic town I have.

Edited to update:

Apparent stability lasted for three days (roughly eight or nine hours of game playing) and problems began anew. There was an announced graphic card driver update which is installed now, however the game still crashes randomly. I am sorry for offering a misleading solution. I will test for much longer before ever attempting to do so again.

So from what I gather, despite everything everyone has done, there is a bug in the game that just crashes directly to desktop no matter what settings and shit you do.

The conspiracy theorist in me says that EA realizes how bad Showtime is going to do with all the retarded social networking shit and added this bug to force us to buy the fix included in the next EP.

Well, my game doesn't crash at all unless I put bad CC in it. So while I'm sure EA would like to sell a crapload of Showtime EPs, I'm not inclined to believe any conspiracy. I don't know why I don't experience these crashes. My game is fully patched (all minor EP/SP patches). I haven't touched the DEP settings. There are currently 170 files in my mods folder because I've been too lazy to merge the new stuff in yet and I'm considering switching over to CC Magic. My computer is equipped with a silly amount of ram (16GB) but that much ram isn't necessary.

There is a store item which can cause the game to crash: the Cellar Arch. It was fixed quite a while ago but you could try re-downloading it. In December there were some "discretion" doors posted on MTS which were removed because they caused the game to crash.(The Discretion Doors have been fixed and re-uploaded) At some point, my game was crashing due to TFM's STFU TV mod. I don't know why that was and I don't know of anyone else who has had that problem. I removed the mod and my game stopped crashing. It could have been a conflict with some other mod but Delphy's Dashboard didn't report any conflict. Personally, I think it was a problem of Overwatch combined STFU TV. In any case, if you can find a way to reliably crash the game, then it's very likely a CC problem.  

I know people don't like to be told to get a new computer, but before I built a new one the game was moody. I didn't get many CTDs  then except for when Save Error 12 reared it's ugly head, but that was annoying enough.

You can try using the crash log analyzer from modthesims. I had a similar problem and it turned out that all of my saves were corrupted and sims 3 kept saving corrupted files. I solved my problem by saving in a separate name, saving twice under that name, and then restoring the back-up of my latest save. If corrupt saves are not your problem, the analyzer might tell you what is the problem.

The CLA is here: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=416883

If you want to try the method I described it is found in a detailed version here: http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Restoring_Backup_Saves

New post to publish another possible solution, depending on the state of the troubled user's system. In my case, crashing due to "TS3 has stopped working" errors ceased after applying an update to .NET 4.0 which was listed as "optional" instead of "important" inside Windows Update, so it did not get automatically installed.

However, freezing did continue, but now it began displaying a definitive pattern instead of the previous randomness. My playing habits were to use Edit Town without saving from Live Mode, and without saving back to Live after editing (choosing "Continue only" instead of "Save") and it's this procedure which causes the freezing within a few sim-minutes to a couple of sim-hours. The same will happen if I try to Buy/Build directly on another lot as allowed by Awesomemod.

As of now I can use the game without DEP exemptions or tweaks, so I hope this experience can help others troubleshoot their own gaming systems.

Edited for the purpose of reporting no further crashes or freezing after one last change: Following the hint contained within this post (see http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,21254.msg588307.html#msg588307 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,21254.msg588307.html#msg588307)), the game no longer malfunctions.

Editing after week-end gaming session. Game crashed once with a "TS3 has stopped working" error which was detected as likely caused by DEP with the CLA utility. Adding DEP exemption solved the issue.

I've personally been having the random ctd happening before I got showtime, so it's not something new and bad they've just introduced, their code has always been sloppy  ;D

I have an nvidia gtx 470 and it randomly locks up and then it makes a clicking noise and all the lag catches up.  Pretty sure it's on its last legs.  I pulled everything out a few weeks ago and cleaned out the heatsink etc, you could have fried an egg on the cpu it was so bad.  I am pretty convinced my CTD's are caused by my motherboard/gfx card getting old and failing.  I plan on rebuilding my pc from scratch in the next few weeks so it will be interesting to see how it fares on a beefy new rig.

I've had this problem all along.  Turning off the internet (and any unnecessary programmes running in the background) and setting autosave to 20 minutes or so helps.  The Crash Log Analyser says it's due to insufficient memory, though.  How much memory have you got?  I only have 2 Gb and am planning to upgrade to 4 Gb shortly.

That doesn't always help.  Pes has already said the game is only 32-bit, therefore the amount of memory the games sees and uses is irrelevant as it won't go above the 32-bit limit, so you can still run out of memory.

The FPS Limiter would probably do you a world of good. Since there is no Vsync in TS3 many GPUs fry themselves running as fast as they can. Mine would regularly hit 100'c without the FPS limiter. I use the 3booter/fps limiter found here: http://moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15585.0.html (http://moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15585.0.html)

Skadi thanks for the tip.

For the first time ever, my pc did not sound like a jet engine about to take off trying to load the game. 
I'd often wondered why it seemed to be having so much trouble with Sims when it can cope with other, far more graphic intensive games more easily.

My first clue was when it would run Crysis okay, but shit itself at TS3. Very bad coding.

Valid_Enough, thank you, thank you, thank you. You litteraly saved my game. :-* I have had nothing but trouble with CTD, en masse. I have been about to give up playing, this has been so frustrating, as I have tried a lot of things to try and fix these crashes. I did exactly what you suggested and now my game is back on track. No more CTD or stuttering. Crossing my fingers that this will continue! Now, I make sure to save every 20 minutes as a new "Save As", this seems to do the trick. YAY!!!  :D I had no idea that all my save games were corrupt, as they didn't say "bad" in the file name - which I have encountered a couple of times. Thank YOU.

I have the exact same problem as Incognito.

Before using awesome mod I had lags/freezes/crashes very often. I would kiss JM on the butt if he wanted for he's resetworld command line. It has totally removed the lags/freezes. But I still have the crash. CLA analyzed the error log as a graphical problem. My graphic card wouldnt be good enough or instable :
I run with W7 64bits. The graphic card is an ATI HD 6900 series 2048 GDDR5 edition if I recall well. No OC and never did it on this one. Drivers up to date - non beta version. Same as the framework. Also have the 4.0 frame update as mentioned upper. I have 8gb ddr3-sdram and an i7 960. Performance wise I shouldnt have any limitation on TS3, expect of it's own programming.
Did LAA on ts3.exe just in case. I have the "ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000084 address: 0x67c30ff4 "C:\Windows\system32\d3d9.dll":0x0001:0x0005fff4" : If I'm not wrong it's not related to DEP. Did a brand new game so it's not corrupted saves.
Expect from the LAA and backup, I didnt modify the bin. No cracks, no old method mods, nothing.
I am also using ~3gb of custom content, all under .package format plus all EPs and SPs. Dashboard did detect some very few conflicts, but from what I've researched it's normal. No corruption.

Icognito (or any one who crashes like us) do you have similar hardware ? Are you running on ATI or nvidia ?

I would tend to say it's windows problem, but it only crashes with TS3. Any other "heavely"* modded games are running without any problem. Would it be windows/driver problem, wouldnt I have issues on games like Skyrim wich I "heavily"* modified ?


* I'm not finding the correct word in english, sorry. What I mean is that I added alot of content and mods making the game get several gigabytes bigger.

I have the exact same problem. What helps for me is putting it in compatibility mode with Windows XP Service Pack 3, although which one to pick might differ for you. It could be something to look into as it allow me 6 hrs playtime before I'm in danger of a crash.

Interesting.  I haven't been paying much attention to sim stuff lately (stupid meatspace life), but I have been getting a lot of CTD since.... some time after getting Pets.  Maybe after patching?  I forget.

ANYWAY, I started a new neighbourhood yesterday and spent a good hour or so plopping LN, Pets, and Ambitions lots down (these are the only EPs I have at the moment, and if I can't play, then I'm unlikely to want to get any more - YOU HEAR THAT, EAXIS?).  I spent a bit less than a sim day in the new neighbourhood today, and got a CTD.

CLA tells me the problem is a corrupt save.  Really?  On a brand new neighbourhood?  Most of the crashes seem to have this listed as a culprit, but really?  On a neighbourhood about two RL hours old?

There is a warning from a previous CTD log (oddly, though, not from this crash) that I may not have enough RAM (a miserable 2GB, whereas the PetsBox insists 1.5GB should be enough).  Will have to get the spousal unit to assist with acquiring more RAM.

I've had the same problem since I installed Pets. My game is fully patched and I'm using only awesomemod. It crushes to desktop, Windows says: "Sims 3 stopped working" or something like that. I tried every tip given in this thread (and also here (http://moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,21212.0.html)), but none of them worked. CLA says "insufficient graphics capability", but when I'm playing WITHOUT awesomemod, everything works great. I can play for hours and nothing happens. Why? Is it possible that awesomemod causes the crashes?

Don't really know. Certain settings in AwesomeMod tend to consume more resources, however, so it may cause borderline computers to overload. This is probably why it is only people who are not me that have these problems.

Would you list some of the settings that may cause overload please?

Although my game doesn't crash due to overload, the AM settings with which I've most noticed a change in performance are InformOnStoryAction and SupremeCommander.

Yes, that ties in with my observations about SC. I seem to have no problems with one or two sims under SC, but put a family of 8 on and the game starts to become unstable. I will turn off the inform on story action and see what happens.