More Awesome Than You!

Blah.  The shoe is now firmly lodged on the other foot..

I've been experiencing random crashes to the desktop.  There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to it.  Once crash was on a Maxis community lot (no custom content) and it occured after I went into the photo booth to take a picture.

The other two crashes were back on my home lot and did not appear to be triggered by anything in particular.

I HATE random problems.  They are so difficult to troubleshoot.  I checked the logs carefully, especially the exception log,  and couldn't see anything helpful.

Is there a way to get a more helpful log ?  I've heard people mention error reporting often, but I've never enabled it. Not sure how to do it either.  Would it help? In any case, I'm not too keen on starting to re-install, remove custom content and all that jazz.  I'd prefer a more targeted approach, possible if the game would give me a clue more nuanced than being rudely dumped to the desktop.

The only major thing that has changed in my game was that I re-categorized my hair to be in the problem bin.  Not sure if doing something incorrectly there could cause the game to crash.

If one of the hair files got corrupted, it could be causing the crashes. I'd try removing them from downloads temporarily and seeing if that fixes it before doing anything more drastic.

We think alike 2Jeffs, I've already done that.  We shall see.  I hope it's that simple.

Actually it turned out to be more simple than a corrupt hair file and at the same time more mysterious.

I tried a couple of different things, but I'm fairly certain that the problem was solved by erasing the groups.cache file located in the My Documents\Ea Games\The Sims 2.

So a rule to remember :  If you are experiencing random crashes, try erasing the groups.cache file.

i keep getting random crashes too! so i'm really grateful with your tip. what is the groups.cache file for?

I think it's like a temporary save of your game data, if you delete it then reload, and check the size of the original, then the size of the newly generated on, there's quite a difference!  and if the file has been running for ages, there's probably some corrupt data lurking there which causes errors like crashing!

by the way, my bodyshop crashed like 8 or 9 times yesterday while i was making some new sims. and usually when i start the game, the game will crash on the loading screen, the one after the opening movie and before the main menu. really hope deleting the groups.cache will hope...fingers crossed!

Do you mean it's crashing while you're still actually waiting for the game to load?

I have to delete my groups.cache everytime I close the game down or it won't get beyond the splash screen when I next try to start it up again.  And I still get random crashes and lockups. I have given up trying to troubleshoot and just save often and deal with it.

Does sound like something's wrong, though! 

Yeah my game has weirdness all over, like sims suddenly losing contacts (they wer ein love dammit!) but not memories, and many other random and strange things.  I suspect something or other is conflicting in my 6GB of CC, so I am left deciding if I try and live with the weirdness and crashing, or actually sort through something like 30,000 files to find out what's causing the problem, and right now I am too lazy to sort through lol.

Holy flurkin shnit.  :o And here I was thinking that I urgently need to prune my 1.8 GB, 10000 files.  It would drive me insane to have that much stuff to sort through! Good luck to you, whatever you decide to do with all that. (I recommend the delete key.. ;))

 :D  Allow me to kiss you!  You're the first person I've heard admitting to having more downloads than me!
I just managed to prune my downloads down below 3GB.

Well, I've a fair amount of downloads, so what I've done is create two versions of the game, Sims2 Play and Sims2 Historical.  Now, at present I'm mainly collecting together all the victorian stuff I have as well as downloading any I find, and I'm playing Veronaville and trying to get everything looking victorian - ish!  It means that I can at least attempt to keep my main downloads folder to a reasonable size - while it's loading, I switch to PC no.2  and play a game of Spider - if it hasn't finished loading by the time I finish  the game, then it's time to do something drastic!

With 6GB of Downloads, Jorenne, I'd say that's your problem in itself!

I keep meaning to, but then I worry about deleting something I'm using in a house and messing it up or something.  Any consensus on what actually is the best way to prune downloads?

(although I KNOW I'll only see it as space for more new stuff  ::)  I seriously think I have a problem)

Well, what I did, basically, was to move certain folders (I file them according to site) which I knew were mainly historical, such as Cindy's Sims, and were mostly recolours, so it wasn't too much of a problem.  Then, if some items failed to appear, I checked in case they needed a mesh, and just copied that across too.

I don't think new meshes being moved out will create a real problem, although you can end up with some objects that look like the original default, but still show the name of the meshed object.  I just replace those when I come across them.

Once I'd moved the obvious folders, I ran searches for stuff with Vic/Vict/Victorian in the filename, and moved those sets and single objects that I found.   

I basically did the same with walls and floors, and with clothing I just moved all the AllAboutStyle victorian clothes - if I had any sims wearing them, they'll just have to wear something else!  The worst part with clothing is finding the mesh, I'm pretty sure I still have to find some of the meshes but I can solve that one easily enough since I have a back-up of all my downloads, and all the victorian stuff from AAS is in its own folder.

It's a slow process, I just do a bit more sorting each time I close the game.

Don't see it as a space for new stuff - Make yet another set of game files and put your new downloads into that!

You could remove all your custom content and it wouldn't cause any problems.  All your sims with custom hair would be bald (or have half their head missing) which is easily fixed by changing appearance.  You might also get weirdness with clothing, which can also be fixed with getting new clothes. Wall paints, floors and objects will be replaced with maxis stuff (leading to some serious re-decorating).  Terrain paints will flash blue.  That's more troublesome as it's not really possible to fix.  You can't remove terrain paint, insofar as I know.

Anyway, make a backup of your neighbourhood and try it.  It if fries your game, which I doubt, you can always put your CC back, and restore the backup. 

But I am definitively getting more crashes, since when I started playing with the base game and uni, I never use to get a crash EVER.  The difference between then and now is meshes (and NL).  So I'm thinking that might be it. (the meshes) I am going to start deleting the cache file everytime time I load the game I think.

PS. Hope it solved your problem BlueCat.

Maybe you have a duplicate mesh causing the problem.  That's the trouble when some sites do a recolour and include the mesh in the file - handy if you don't have it already, but sometimes if you're installing a lot of stuff, you forget to check!  It's one of the reasons I won't use anything like SimsFileMaid to install my files, some of those kind of programs just install twice and add "copy" to the addition.

The flashing blue texture of missing terrain paint can be removed by ctrl-click and drag with the terrain tool, but you'll never be able to package the lot if you remove the terrain from your downloads folder (and don't put it back). It may be okay if you put the terrain back, I'm not sure. If you're not interested in packaging the lot, it doesn't matter a whole lot, as the lot can still be put in the bin.

Even if you put the terrain back, it will still be corrupt and unpackageable.

I built two houses, both of which play perfectly well with the current family installed, so I packaged them and installed them with Clean Installer to my Vanilla game.  Both houses crashed as soon as I tried to enter them, whereas other houses from the same neighbourhood were fine.  I can only attribute it to having opened the darn terrain paint menu while I was building them, even though I didn't actually use any terrain paints on either lot!

I have every intention of removing every house with custom terrain paints out of my game and rebuilding them so I can eventually just delete the whole terrain paints folder!  And people are still offering houses for download which are riddled with the stuff!

DAMNIT!!!!!!!! I was buidling a house and it was getting close to what I wanted and WHAM.  Sims crashed.  This is getting beyond annoying. 

Exception time: 01/21/2006, at 10:39:52.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 1300 (0x00000514).

Is it trying to access a locked file?  Is there anyway I can get a more precise error log, so that I know what it's trying to access when it's crashing.

And while I'm at it, does anyone know what that error is :

 ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ffed5453 with existing 2026960b:2c3e53d9:ffed5453
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1073).  It seems to exist even in a vanilla game, and I've heard other people complain about it, so it's not just me.  It spams my error log big time.

I get loads of those audio errors, but I notice quite often when sims are sitting at the dining table they appear to be talking, but they are inaudible.  I never got any such errors before NL, so I feel pretty certain that the majority are connected to some kind of fault in the new dialogue interactions.  If so, they really shouldn't be appearing in build mode.

As to the Exception error, I haven't a clue!

haven't got the chance to play the game lately, angelyne :D if i still have the problem i'll report here

my downloads folder is a mere 400mb something. and i don't have copies of meshes. actually, my game has been crashing since i first fired up the game. a clean game it was, no downloads whatsoever.

and yes ZZ, it crashes when the game itself is loading. it's annoying, but it's bearable. what's not bearable is when i've been playing for hours and forgot to save, then the game crashes. i have only myself to blame :(

the bodyshop thingy was sorta strange. never had any crashes before. maybe the custom objects are to blame this time :D many times it's when i try to change the length of the sim's eyes..now i avoid even hovering my mouse near that bloody option :D

i will certainly do what you guys recommend. i'll delete the groups.cache everytime i play the game. or maybe just clicking to make it a read-only file will help?

I don't think this is a good idea, since the game updates this file on a continous basis.

Well, funnily enough, my game crashed for the first time for ages just an hour or so ago, and it happened in build mode in Veronaville as I was attempting to remodel a house - the one next door to the Summerdream lot, with the maze in the garden.  And when I checked my logs, I had two of these exception files, one a notepad one which could be read, the other an MDMP file (whatever that is).  I'm pasting the first part of the log in case anyone can explain what this Access Violation is!


All I was doing at the time was removing some of the flowerbed edgings!

And I agree with Angelyne, making the groups.cache file read only would not be advisable. 

well what do you know.  This is the EXACT same error as me.  Either this is a very generic error message or...I am not sure about the or part lol.

I can only think that my crash was due to something being faulty with the lot - I've had similar crashes when trying to delete a mini-fridge in a dorm in the past.  I think some Maxis lots are definitely buggy, and nothing you can do will actually save them!

I just wanted to make a manageable house for the Summerdreams!  I can't cope with that totally ridiculous lot they live in now!  It's enough to give me a migraine!

I found that deleting the Groups.cache helps with astronomical closing times after you close the game.  It's amazing, and it doesn't affect the game other than that at all!

Everyone is entitled to play the game as it suits them!  I don't think that criticising other peoples' playing style is helpful to anyone.

If this makes you feel better about yourself, then good for you!


Zephyr, I did a quick search and 0xC0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION is a very very very generic error.  It's present in every application and game that is based on Microsoft.  So no help there.

So far my crashes have happened on a Maxis community lot (no custom content there), on my own lot, building a house in a different lot.  So I am not sure if it's lot related.  Interesting enough the problem on my lot re-occured constantly until I deleted the cache file.  I think it occured when the portal was activated, I'm not sure.  The error on the community lot occured when I tried to use the photo booth and lastly the error building a lot occured when I used the dropper icon (but it wasn't the first time in that session)/

I'm wondering if my problem was I just continued using the wall tool to delete the border.

But I think it may be more to do with memory - in that I'd deleted a heck of a lot of walls etc. in a short time, and I was probably expecting too much and the game just couldn't handle it!  It seems to find it easier to remember what you build more easily than hat you "unbuild"!

You are a judgemental little sort, aren't you? First that nonsense about macs a couple of weeks back, and then snotting off about other people having custom content... do you actually have any idea what you're talking about?  ;)

I think he just likes being rude!

Quite possibly. I have a feeling that it is at that age where being rude to other people, especially us 'old folks,' is cool. Sorry, kid, it just makes you look like a wanker.

<holds a sign up that reads " Don't feed the trolls">

OK, calm down, deep breaths, I'm not shaking, honestly, my typing is always this bad....

I have deleted some stuff.  Actually deleted, gone, poof, no longer there.

My download folder now sits at a paltry 1.6GB.

I feel ill, this isn't normal, nor is it natural........

You don't type bad, I see no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors.

Woot...way to go!!

:D

wow! good for you! i can't bear deleting any custom contents..yet. :D

oh and i got lots of the ACCESS VIOLATION type logs. maybe it's a conspiracy...

Not sure if I found a solution but ...

Last night I was getting those annoying crashes to the desktop.  I noticed that the crashes seem to occur when I was zooming around the lot.  I started to suspect that the problem was caused by the neighbour view option.  I turned it off and immediately performances improved and I didn't get another crash.  So we will see if this keeps up.

I find TS2 is really buggy for me, where it wasn't before.  After I reloaded the game, one of my sims gave birth.  I never got the prompt for a name.  She put the baby on the ground and it was unselectable.  It was still named baby boy.  Controls were locked out.  I restored control with Pescado's lot debugger but still couldn't interact with the baby.  I had to exit without saving.

Also I am getting the jump bug for the first time ever.  Sometimes I direct my sims to interact and they jump away from each other, and the action drops out of the queue. 

I think the fubared baby was fixed in one of Pescado's Hacks.

The jump bug could be caused by overly too many memories, or by a corrupt memory.  Do you see any jagged line-speak bubbles?  If so, you probably have to destroy some memories that are corrupt.

Isn't it always the way?  One bad memory ruins it for everyone else.

This game is incredibly buggy for me, too.  I never had these kinds of problems with Sims 1, at least when I wasn't idiotically deleting cmx files and the like. ;D

Angelyne, I wish I could advise you but as you've probably surmised by now that would be useless.  But I'm sorry you're having such problems.

I wasn't really expecting advice.  Although if someone can wave a magic wand and make it all better, I wouldn't say no :).  I just wanted to whine a bit about the bugginess of it all.  It used to be so stable for me pre-nighlife.

Oh and no jagged memory, that I have see. 

I just don't get it, not only has my game been crashing non stop and generating tons of these error files (duplicate in tsaudio... 1M worth of blah blah in notepad) but I'm not even entering cheats.

I tried the old 'folder to desktop to generate new one' trick and it crashed again trying to load the first house in a default neighbourhood (completely bare newly generated game folder).

I just installed Uni a week or so ago and haven't even been able to play because it keeps crashing.

I seem to think this has only been happening since I installed the patch, which was a day or two after installing Uni... aargh.
Guess that means reinstallation after all :(

The first time a lot of people installed Uni they had problems, I know I did, mainly with everything just freezing when I tried to enter lots etc. but I also had problems getting any of the new college things to work - just got something which read "spawn blah blah (can't remember what) and then occasionally the sim would go to class or do an assignment etc.  I had to remove all my downloads and replace them a few at a time.  The odd thing was the game was fine in neighbourhood view!

I think I'll just skip the patch when I reinstall it, I only want to play for a week or two before adding Nightlife, so it should be ok unpatched til then (it was fine til I patched it)

I will add my stuff back slowly though... heh heh

(so... much.... stuff)

My game has just gone kaput - kept getting stuck at the load screen (after the cine plays) and crashes back to desktop.  Funny thing was I was playing it about an hour earlier with no problems - no new downloads, no spawning of kids etc.  I switched it off as stupid Helen Goth toddler was showing up in a suit and I wanted to make sure she really was a girl and not a boy in disguise - yes it has happened before. I checked simpe, she was a girl, I went and had dinner.  I came back and pfft nothing. I have uninstalled it and will re-install when i get the energy.  moan, whinge, gripe! :'(

Did you check out your PC stats?  Maybe something else was trying to do something at the same time - like your anti-virus maybe was trying to download and install an update?  I used to have real problems with McAfee doing this until I upgraded to the new version.

No it wasn't that - I checked and nothing else was running.  Thanks for the suggestion though.  The only odd thing I did notice was my groups.cache - it showed the date modified as 2004 but I had deleted it earlier on today.

On the plus side, I can play a little recklessly (no china rules) knowing that with OFB coming out in 3 weeks I'll end up re-installing anyway

The groups.cache thing is distinctly odd!  I just checked my current game one, and it's dated today's date!  So obviously something is not right with your game!  But why not just move your game folder to the desktop and uninstall/reinstall your latest EP?  That's a lot quicker than a complete reinstall and may well sort out the problem.

Another thing crosses my mind, is, which order did you install the EPs - in release order or did you install NL and then Uni?  I remember with Sims1 if you did things in the wrong order you often had to reinstall the latest by release date afterwards.

I installed them in release order and as I said earlier was able to play with no problems for a couple of weeks.  Something mysterious happened yesterday that it didn't like but I've no idea what. Ah, sims, can't live with them, can't live without them  :P

Unfortunately I didn't see your latest message earlier as I went to bed & then I got up really early and re-installed everything without checking MATY first - silly me.  I will however try the latest EP trick if it happens again - and knowing my luck it probably will. 

sends a big smile and box of chockies ZephyrZodiac's way

 ;D 

just an update. even with deleting groups.cache, i still get the crashes at times, thought they have become less frequent. it doens't bother me much, so everythings a-ok here :)

Maybe it happens after you've been playing a while and used up too much RAM?  I usually close my game when it starts to get choppy, or at least save and exit the lot and move to a smaller one.  And I check my stats in TaskManager too.  sometimes I find the CPU is working overtime, and staying out of the game for a while calms it down.

My game would not necessarily "crash" to the desktop, but "fall" to the desktop...if that makes sense.  The screen would all of sudden, at random times(during loading, during the neighborhood screen, etc.)  just "minimize" to my desktop.  When I would click to bring the game screen back up...the game would come back with no problem, then do it's regular thing for a quick 3 seconds, then all of a sudden it would "minimize" to desktop again.  I would have to scramble to quit out of the game before it did it again.

I defragged my computer and that seemed to have solved the problem.  My hardrive was badly fragmented.  So, this might be what's going on with some of your computers. 

--green

Well since this thread came back to life, I should mention that I have solved my problem as well.  I had installed quite a few houses in my neighbhoorhood for flavor purposes.  I had a downtown with Erwin's appartement buidlings, I had a slum area with some of Cyclonesue's houses.

Finally I made the connection that my problems started soon after I started populating my neighbourhood with houses.  So I moved  to the house bin a whole bunch of different houses I had installed and lo and behold my problems stopped.

I don't see the relationship, but then it's all part of your neighbourhood file, so maybe something wasn't right in one of those houses.  Weird though.

I was also using a no CD method, (running Virtual Daemon manager witha mini image).  I went back to using the CD to be sure that wasn't the problem.  Well after a while with no problems, I went back to using Daemon Tools because the sound of my cd drives whirring up to speed every time I boot or start the game drives me NUTS.  Everything has stayed stable so the problem is firmly pointed in the direction of one of my ex-house

Did you check in SimPE to see if you'd gained a lot of unlinked character files?

i hope i'm not performing necromancy..i fear JM :D

i've closed all unneccesary programs, processes and such. i restart my computer everytime i want to play the game. as for unlinked character files, simPE is annoyingly lagging on my computer. in fact, even mozilla firefox is..i have 1400MB something of RAM, 256 or at least 128MB of graphic memory, but the problem persists. yes, i agree i need to defrag my hard drive very much. maybe that'll help haha.

I would say yes, clean up your hard drive in every way you can, run Chkdsk, run Defrag, check for spyware, clear all your caches and do everything to make your RAM yours again!  Then try running simPE again.