More Awesome Than You!

So now to figure out why....I redid the hacks so pretty sure they aren't the culprits. Seems to cause an audio stammer or cut out and then you get the dreaded "This Application has crashed and will now terminate" box.

I deleted groups.cache which fixed this glitch with OFB. Cpuld possibly be video drivers (Nvidia) I'm using some really old ones which were great in pets but maybe not so great with Seasons? I'll try the 81.98's the one person said were working ok with OFB & Pets.

Here's the log of the last two crashes...different neighbor hoods.

Exception time: 03/03/2007, at 00:22:57.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 1812 (0x00000714).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSBin\Sims2EP5.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP5
Application/module version: 1.7.0.145
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 112 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT


Extra Exception Data:

Shutdown: 0
HostName: HOME2
MemoryUsage: 668828K
Neighborhood Name: Veronaville
Neighborhood Prefix: N003
Lot Name: Visionary Villa - 3+ BR 2.5 BA
Family Name: Jalowitz
Extra Exception Data End:

Exception module:  .
Exception address: 0xb7c4b8b8. Section:Offset: 0x00:0x00000000.

R
Call stack:
(Debug information (.pdb files) appears to be absent).
0x0000:0x00000000 .
0x0001:0x0085db6b C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSBin\Sims2EP5.exe public: virtual bool __thiscall cTSAudioCOMDirector::OnStart(class cIGZCOM *)() + 1019269



NEXT NEIGHBORHOOD:

Exception time: 03/03/2007, at 18:42:32.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 2980 (0x00000ba4).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSBin\Sims2EP5.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP5
Application/module version: 1.7.0.145
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 160 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT


Extra Exception Data:

Shutdown: 0
HostName: HOME2
MemoryUsage: 899524K
Neighborhood Name: Pleasantview
Neighborhood Prefix: N001
Lot Name: 215 Sim Lane
Family Name: Pleasant
Extra Exception Data End:

Exception module:  .
Exception address: 0x19dd837d. Section:Offset: 0x00:0x00000000.


Call stack:
(Debug information (.pdb files) appears to be absent).
0x0000:0x00000000 .

S
The one thing all of the crashes have in common is the CTSAudioComDir With the exception of the one above. All the other crashes in Veronaville have that line.

Any clues what it is? Hate to reinstall and find it's a driver glitch. Off to see if by chance there is a driver update for the sound but I doubt it. AC97 doesn't update all that often.

Ah hah...a new sound driver is available. Put out in 11/2006...bout once a year they seem to do this?Last were 7/2005. Cool!
Got it now to mess around and install it.See if that's it.

If you can tell anything by the parts of those logs let me know. Appreciate it. ;D

New drivers in, crashed again after about 2 hours of play. Again the same stack call referring to the
Cts audio com Director. Crashes when they are gardeing mostly. Weeding or this time harvesting the Oranges. Weird. Guess try new video drivers next. After that I'm at a total loss. Maybe delete the
groups.cache again.....

sounds like your available Ram is pretty low  try shutting down back ground task's see if that helps

I thought so too. A friend once told me an "access violation" happens if the game is looking for more resources (memory=RAM) and accidentally tries to take some of the memory needed by windows. And windows is a spoiled brat who doesn't like sharing.
So I just added a bit more ram and changed the size of the virtual memory (paging?) file and I rarely get those crashes.

I looked at the free amount of ram in some of the crashes last year and there is no reason for an Access Violation with this amount of ram free:
Exception time: 11/15/2006, at 23:25:45.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 3064 (0x00000bf8).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSBin\Sims2EP3.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP3
Application/module version: 1.3.0.351
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 356 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT

Exception time: 01/08/2007, at 21:45:28.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 2120 (0x00000848).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSBin\Sims2EP3.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP3
Application/module version: 1.3.0.351
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 320 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT

However that being said, definitely a drop in free ram here. However never had a crash in Pets so don't know if the ram count was lower or not. Might be that damn antivirus which always is a resource hog and this one has no way to kill it completely. I may switch programs. But sitting here just running the net
system information shows the following. I don't have many programs to kill off because I don't load much stuff. I just don't have a lot of crap running like most people do other than XP's junk.



User Name   HOME2\Connie
Time Zone   Central Standard Time
Total Physical Memory   1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory   728.70 MB
Total Virtual Memory   2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory   1.96 GB
Page File Space   2.40 GB
Page File   C:\pagefile.sys

This being said it ran for 2 hours last night with the DL folder and hacks out playing Rosehill/dale vanilla state with no crash. Memory leak in the damn game? They had one in Sims1. Ususally hit after playing for a few hours.

This old, but this was a problem in Diablo and seems Nivida drivers could be the problem.
http://www.opentechsupport.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1387

That being said I guess I'll try and update those and see if that stops it. That could be the drain on the resources.

Still snooping out blurbs on this.

Here's more on "Access Violations:
2 - The game terminates suddenly

Access Violation
The processor was instructed to access a piece of information on a memory location that either does not exist, or that the current process has no access to (for example, because it belongs to a different process). It invariably means that there is a bug somewhere, because normally this should never happen. Accessing memory through an uninitialized pointer can cause this, or accessing memory through a pointer that has been released back to Windows previously. Now, the question that remains is whether this is caused by the game code (and thus is a bug in the game) or a driver. If problem is reproducible in the game (as in: load a save game, do the same steps over and over again, and each time it crashes at the same spot), then it's most likely a problem in the game, and should be reported in the appropriate bug forum.

Note again a driver reference. And we know Nvidia drivers and Sims2 have glitches.

Nvidia drivers are the only things which ever make my XP crash these days. Then again I tend to use the leaked betas....

Could very well be tham. I meant to give the link that I found that about Access Violations. It's a good read and pertains to most games.
http://forums.amd.com/lofiversion/index.php/t35679.html

I only get it when I'm entering a lot. The lot loading time is average, I suppose, if it takes a little too long, I just move the mouse to discover the "This program has performed an ...(something-illegal operation) and had/has to be terminated" window. It's never happened while playing the game, just loading lots. I'd say it was a game bug. (I do have a Nvidia card, but I blame the game anyway)

blubug..can you not get into any lot and play? I do notice the lots in hoods I had before I installed seasons
are slow loading but I don't get the dreaded "This Application has crashed blah blah until I play for awhile.
Maybe a couple of hours or maybe a few minutes...not real consistent there.

Now I seem to be able to play Rosehill or whatever it's called.Lots load fast there. Going to load everything back up (CC and Hacks)and go there
and see what happens. My last resort is to change these drivers on the Video card. But with Nvidia drivers being so hit and miss for this game......this could be a long drawn out process with no fix even after I do that. Worked so good in Pets.....everything worked in Pets.

I'm like you lets blame the game. ;D Works for me.

I've had similar problems, and I do NOT have an Nvidia card, so a game bug seems a likely culprit. Before my latest reinstall of Pets, I was having problems with all but the smallest of lots crashing upon loading, or rather *not* loading. It did not seem to matter whether the lots were custom or Maxis, or whether or not they used CC.  Anything larger than a 2x3 lot would crash during the loading process. I never did figure out the problem, but culling my Downloads folder from 6.71 GB to just over 3 GB seems to have helped (or perhaps the reinstall alone did the trick - dunno). I have a high-end computer, and do not have Seasons.

Another problem I had before reinstalling was that my Downloads folder seemed to have become corrupted (or something). For example, in the Buy catalogue I found a Maxis armoire with a recolour that looked like rooftiles. Deleting the weird texture caused some totally different custom object to completely disappear from the catalogue. This actually happened with several objects - that's just one example. I never did figure out what caused that particular problem, but it seems to be cured since the reinstall. The new problem I'm having is with recolours of Maxis objects overwriting the original textures *if* the recolours are subfoldered. This only happens on objects that do not normally have colour options, such as paintings, certain lamps, and the Patio Plastics chair. Once I move the recolours from their subfolder(s) into the main Downloads directory, the original colours of the objects, along with their recolours, appear when I look at the item details in the catalogue. I really don't want all these files floating around in the main directory, but I also don't want custom textures overwriting the originals. It's very irritating. Stupid EA.

I didn't mean to highjack your thread, Cons, but I've experienced similar problems (plus others), and really would like to know what might have caused them.

Notsoveryawesome
No problem. Only way we'll get to the bottom of the cause of these crashes is to put them all together.
I've looked on other BBS's to see what's causing crashes lately and there are several with problems out there.

I had a crash problem in OFB..somehow got it fixed. Nothing in Pets, ran smooth as silk and now Seasons is giving me a bizare headache. This machine is big enough to handle most anything...
2.2GZ Athlon64 processor, 1 gig of Ram, 256 meg video card, 160 gig HDD with an 8 meg cache, surely to god that's enough for Sims2. Crud I build computers....and this one has me baffled. Shouldn't be a hardware issue unless it's a driver on that video card.

The only time I had the weird graphics like your describing was in OFB and it was a driver issue. I had to roll back my video driver to an older version. But I didn't think it affected ATI cards as much as Nvidia. Unless you have a catalyist driver that's way too old for the game. Then they were having some glitches with those. My maxis content had strange modeling effects on it. Didn't look like roofing tiles, but a whole new design pattern.At that time I had no CC Downloads so I knw it wasn't that.

there is a massive memory leak during seasons play I checked my available Ram prior to firing up the game it said 772 MB available  while the game is running its reduced to 159 MB of available Ram

That's a good possibility. When I'm at idle I have about 760 megs free, then down to 148? Big leak if that's right. They had one in Sims1. So could very well be it.

How big is your downloads folder?

That's not it Witch. I just loaded with 1/4 of my DL's and hacks and it crashed. Log said 124 meg available at the crash. System performance showed 728 available right after it closed. That's a usage of 604 megs to load this game? I think not folks. I don't have anything running to drain it when the game is playing.
My DL folder is only 503 meg at present. Originally it had 2.5 gig in it. So you'd think it could load 503 meg without draining the memory.It loads fast though. Loaded fast with the 2.5 gig in there.
Crash Memory data
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 124 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT

Bangelnuts
 I reloaded. Checked system memory under preformance tab in Task Manager before I loaded the game,
then let it load to Riverblossomhills to Viego House, then hit alt-tab, opened task manager read the memory
usage at that point, and then had to close it using "endtask"...then rechecked the memory after winders closed it: Here's the results:
Physical Memory
Before load   731196 meg available
At the check in game  204048 meg available
After I closed it          750680 meg available

The Kernal Memory takes a hit also:
Before 84500
At the check in game 99388
After the close     82360

MY dl  is 3gb in size however I removed the DL folder for this check on the RAM,it got even worse at Uni the leak continued and reduced  ram to 95.7 MB of available Ram. I am currently culling  my DL folder ie getting rid of  stuff I never use.  CC furniture is being culled right now  and reduced significantly at the moment,next will be decor,then clothing and hair. what I will leave in is only the stuff I use all the time everything else is being deleted

I have two gigs. Cacheman reports about 1.65 MB before I load the game, and then around 500 (or less) once Seasons has been loaded, played a bit, and I alt-tab back to the desktop. 

Will load Cacheman on my other system tonight (Win ME), which has the base game, NL, and Pets, to check the memory readings with that setup.

It;s weird. Just plain weird. Loaded it this afternoon with CC removed and just hacks and hacked objects in the DL folder. (This should get you a crash, yes?) No crash. Played for 3 1/2 hours, it was zippier in the rotations,played like it did before I put Seasons in, which was zippy and smooth but with 2.5 gig of Custom DL in there. I have not changed my drivers yet.

I've seen posts onTSR where they've played for 5 days and are now getting the "Application has Crashed" messages. But didn't before.

I have no clue what's going on with it. May load it later tonight and find it crashes or it may go ahead and play just fine. I'm playing Roseblossomhills where there is no CC lots unless I add a hacked object. (The Computer, exerciser, Easel and Coffee pot). So I can maybe now assume those are good to go. Maybe...
who knows. Didn't check the memory during this load but went back through all my log files and after Open For Business was installed is when it had crashes with the really low memory.It never crashed in Pets so I have no idea about it. Pets is when I had the most Custom Downloads in it.

Kind of makes you wonder if there was a memory leak in OFB, the patch fixed it, Pets didn't have one or it did and they fixed it in the patch because I put Pets in and the patch in right after install before I started it up.Now maybe Seasons has a memory leak and depending on how much ram you have would depend on how quick it would crash or how long your playing at one sitting?

Installed Cacheman on a Win ME Pentium III Dell Dimension 4100 with 512 MB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9200 card.  Base game, NL, OFB and Pets on that machine, plus a 545 MB downloads folder.  Graphics set to low.

Cacheman reported available RAM of 324 MB at the desktop, reduced to 32 MB in Pleasantview and after opening Bluewater and playing the Tinker family for a few minutes, available RAM was down to 8 MB.  Sucky performance.

512 just doesn't do it, unless one is using the experience as a form of punishment.

The HD on my 8400 disappeared and it's at the shop right now, but something was sucking up the 2 gigs on that system before it went down - and I never even got into winter.

ZiggyDoodle, I agree with you. It's sucking way too much ram in any version of the game. I thought about
putting it on my husband's machine and seeing what it did with a differnt processor and video card.

He's got an Athlon XP2800+ Barton Core 2.1 GZ machine with a Nvidia FX5700 128 meg video card. Older drivers than mine I think. He doesn't do anything to warrant a driver change.Also has a gig of ram on that machine. Have Sims1 on that machine for the Granddaughter to play when she comes over. She's 10.

You have Dell's? Intel ? If so that answers my next question. I was curious if it was an A64 problem with the Sims2. I had seen a post on EA's board by a gal that had an AMDX2 and was having problems. Now any dual core processor (AMD or Intel) shouldn't have any trouble at all running this game.

I started with winter so at least I've seen that and when I played yesterday I got into spring but never have made it into summer or fall.

Just think how much ram you'd need if you were running this on a Vista machine. To run Vista you need 2 gig if you want to do anything at all...with this sucking of memory by the game you'd better have 4 gigs in those machines to play it.

I'm running on an AMD X2 3800, and I'm not having any major issues. It IS lagging more than I'd like, but I blame my new AV for that (I'm SOOO about to uninstall the damn thing!!!) The "sweet spot" for TS2 seems to be about 1.5-2 GB RAM. The more CC you have, the more RAM you need. Now, I don't believe Pes when he says you need twice the amount of RAM as CC, but there's no way less than 1 GB of RAM is going to be anywhere near enough if you have a lot of CC, either.

I haven't had the crashing yet but the Ram leak is definitely there !I have a gig of memory and a 2.77 GIG DL that is still being culled I got rid of furnishings,skins and some hair and all never used decor. I am now culling clothing. trying to reduce even further at desktop I have 772mb of ram available in pleasantview at SSU I am getting a 95.72 mb of available. ram . I am going to call EA today. sibce the specs swear 256mb is enough ram to run seasons  there is no way the leak should be this bad

Sorry for answering late, but I have these problems upon loading the lots (when I DO have them) so yes, I cannot enter them. When I fire up the game again, I can enter the exact lot with no problems. But it is random. Sometime I have the game on for days non-stop, sometimes it's 5 minutes after starting. But always on the loading screen. Since I delete my groups.cache every time I load the game, the crashes are rare.

I've had this same problem with random lots crashing my game since Pets. It's infuriating, and I'd like to know what causes it, so I can avoid mishaps in the future..

In the past, random lots crashing was caused by saving the lot while someone was talking on a cell phone.  I think the solution was usually to turn testing cheats on, enter the lot and delete anything that throws an error.  Or there was also a different fix, maybe, but I can't remember what it is now -- a search on 'cell phone' here might turn it up.

I have no cell phones anywhere.So I can rule that out.
Played today for 5 hours in Roseblossomhills. Just with all the hacks in, no CC other than my hacked objects.
Checked the amount of free ram before I colsed it and it was at 178852 meg, after I shut down I had 808908 meg free.

I was able to load 2.5 gig of custom content in Pets without a glitch. Now I don't think so. May have to buy more ram to load it up. Which you really shouldn't have to do. I did fill out a bug report for EA and point blank asked if they had a memory leak in this game. Sent them the log. My DL folder right now is 102 meg.
It crashed with 500 something in there. I think the maximum ram this MB can handle is 2 gig, which is about the maximum XP will utilize properly. Vista can utilize more ram, but then Vista sucks ram up all by itself.I don't have Vista and I don't want it.

Seasons is much more of a memory hog than any previous expansion.  You can hit ctrl-shift-S  while in the game to see your frame rate and how much memory the game is using.  Seasons seems to be using about 200-250 megs of memory more than Pets.  (On my computer, I was using about 500-600 on Pets, with Seasons it's jumped to 700-850).  And note, I don't really have much custom content other than clothing and hair (ie, no furniture).

I also am getting a really bad slowdown at night, down to about 20 fps, and then when the water is being used, it drops to the 10s.  While in Pets, I got a pretty steady 70-50 fps (and during the day, that's what I get in Seasons)

Same here. I watch my usage and my commit charge, and it peaks about 200 MB above when I was running Pets.  I don't think it has a memory LEAK as some claim, because it doesn't get worse as the game goes on, assuming that I'm saving every now and then. That's what a memory leak is, when a program is using RAM and not releasing it like it's supposed to when the program is done with it, so that it continually sucks up more and more RAM the longer it runs. Seasons uses about the same amount from the time I load a lot until I shut down the game.  It just uses more RAM. Period.  All those extra things it has to keep track of just sucks up memory. I really don't know why anyone is surprised or why they think it's using more than it "should" based on wherever they pull "should" from. *shrug*

This was not the case with me. These were community lots only, and the crashes would happen when attempting to load them from the neighbourhood, as well as when sending my sims via taxi or owned car (or at least attempting to). The crash would happen during loading, and it was rarely the same lot twice. The only thing the lots had in common was that they were community lots and were medium-sized or larger. I have a fast processor and plenty of RAM, so I've no idea what caused the crashes. Reinstalling Pets and culling my Downloads folder seems to have helped, but I don't think Downloads had anything to do with the initial problem, as the problem began suddenly during a time when I hadn't installed any new CC for well over a month. It is truly puzzling.

At first I thought it was a memory leak, but I had been having intermittent delayed write failure errors in TS2 upon exiting.  That, coupled with the sudden disappearance of my HD this weekend, led me to take my system to my local tech.  After four days of heavy duty testing (and the reappearance of my perfectly okay HD), a cable replacement seems to have fixed the DWF error and my system certainly is running better.

With my computer back home finally, I played tonight and kept notes.  Opened the game with 1635MB free Ram; lowest it got to was 101 MB after opening Bluewater, then it went back up to 999.  The reading was 852MB free when I finally closed the game - much, much better numbers than I was getting before the cable replacement.  I concur with Katenigma that Seasons is a memory hog.  Okay if you're running with two gigs, but EA is out of their fricken mind to claim 512 is acceptable.

ZiggyDoodle,
I did a clean install of the game today. So running it now with only my hacks in it and hacked objects. About 100 meg of content. Loaded with 346 meg of ram free at the entry into a house in Roseblossomhills. After about 2 hours of play I checked it and it had 189 meg free, after 3 hours 178 meg free. So it is declining on this machine anyway. Which would indicate a memory leak. Will just have to keep an eye on it. Because all my crashes before with the exception of 1 I think were after 2 to 3 hours of play and the memory was low then. I probably won't have time to play any long times for a few days. Have some tax returns to get out
for a couple of clients. (I don't do many any more..trying to retire completely from this. After 35 years I've about had enough, LOL)

So I'll let you know how it goes.

And now tonight I was watching, and after 2 1/2 hours of play, I steadily went down from 945+MB of free RAM when I first loaded the lot to 520+  ??? I did not see that kind of drop at all last night when I was playing. Maybe the Plant Sims have a memory leak?  Tonight was the first night I played one.  Once, it did pop back up to 730MB after I'd saved, but other times, saving didn't make a difference.

Odd, just odd.

It's still a memory hog, regardless of leaks, though.  ;)

Cons, are you using Cacheman?  Might help with recovering memory.

http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_charisma_page=products.

ZiggyDoodle

Saved your link.I'm on several Hardware BBS's and one of my friends is an expert in memory. Works for OCZ.
I'll post the problem on his BBS. See what he thinks and recommends to maybe corner the problem.
They used to use cacheman but don't know if there is a later and greater proggie out there or not.

katenigma Something with the game declines memory after you play for awhile. I don't play plant sims so I wouldn't think that was it.

Hmm. The other night I discovered the game lagging badly when trying to go fast speed at night. I'm running an AMD dual core Athlon 64 4400. (2GB RAM). I saw mention of a possible dual core problem in this thread?

Saving didn't help, neither did exiting the game, rebooting and reloading. I had been playing for a week prior to that with no problems. I turned anti-aliasing down to half, turned off shadows, still no lag difference.

How do you test RAM whilst running - just Windows Task Manager or is there a better way of getting a log? Is that what Cacheman does? I know, I'll Google it.  ;D

Is it possible to introduce a virus to the game via a mod or object?

witch

I saw a post at the Sims2.com by a gal running an Athlon 64x2 that was having a glitch. Like I said a dual core shouldn't have any problem at all.Dual core's are super fast processors. Both AMD and Intel one's. My processor is an A64 but not dual core.

I check to see the ram usage by checking before I load the game in task manager, then ALT-TAb the game when I enter a house and see what task manager says is free and then do the same thing after a couple of hours of play to see if it's changed. Not sure how the other's are doing it, but that's how I've been checking it.

I did use the Ctrl-shift+s once to see what it said but other than the frame rates on the video card flashing
at 20FPS then up to 40FPS then down then up, it really didn't tell me much. I'll have to run it again and see if it will hold still long enough for me to read everything.

One possibility is the video card is needing mega ram to operate. My card is a 256 meg card but my aperature in BIOS  is set for another 256 meg of system ram to be available for the video card to use. So it's possible that's what is sucking the ram down after extended play. But I'd be more prone to think a memory leak of some kind because the longer you play the more it declines.

I don't think it's a memory leak I'm experiencing or I should have regained speed after restarting. Also, the speed loss was constant, not declining.

I've downloaded Cacheman and that puts an icon in the system tray with either a graph or a numeric indicator of how much RAM is being used.

Thing is, I played again last night with no memory lag.  :-\

ETA: Although I'm wondering about invisible gardeners and so forth, I have one family in a new hood and 261 character files. I don't think SimPE is updated yet, so I can't go and see what the characters are.

Now I had  a similar problem trying to get to one family , while it was loading the music would start stuttering and then it would crash.  Everytime, it happened after I hit the disable cc content and then restarted the game.  I do have a nividia geforce 6150 le card and 2 gb of ram.  I doubt if its the ram at least for mine.  Yes, seasons is installed.  I put in my backup copy and it worked then.

I've been using SimPE with Seasons.  I've modified edited my characters. Apart from the warning message, it all seems to work fine.  I noticed that trying to pull up the neighbourdhood memories doesn't work, and I'm sure other things are broken as well, but viewing and editing characters seems fine.

OK Ta. I'll backup and give it a bash.

I'm wondering if it's actually something to do with the Safedisc crap they use. I know on my desktop the game always crashes before the game loads if I don't use a mini image with Daemon Tools or the crack; every time I try with the original cd the game blows up. But it seems to work just fine on my laptop most of the time.

Mine was on a brand new lot I'd just built for the Greenmans, and I didn't hire any NPC's at all until right before I shut the game down.  It was a larger lot than I'd been running lately, with a huge greenhouse.... I just don't know why sometimes it runs fine, and sometimes it doesn't, with nothing truly different between instances.

I play windowed, so I just keep task manager running.  I do have an X2 processor, but my processing was fine- about 52%, which was about what it was running with before Seasons.

Here's a link that might help everyone at least optimize their windows XP for "gaming". I had a great deal of  this done before I found it but more suggestions there that I hadn't done. It's a little snappier now. LOL
http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/windows_xp_opt/


Also for those of you that into really deep tweaking of WINXP here's another link.....fiddle at your own risk.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm

Black VIper used to have the best on tweaking WINXP, but he's putdated at the moment. But is going to update.

I've done the Black Viper suggestions before, but I suggest if you do, print it out and note what you changed. I had something I turned off unexpectedly prevent some critical Windows security update from installing. It was only after much searching through the help files that it referenced this one service, and I'd remembered tweaking it (not even to off, just to manual!) The best option is to set up a separate account  to tweak for gaming, and let another account left to Windows' default settings, so you can still do what's necessary.

I never let Winders Update itself automatically. Have that disabled permanently and always have. Not that you shouldn't especially if you use IE.(Isn't this Pescados' view also..thought I read that in a thread) But I don't and won't. You can drive a semi through IE and nobody would notice, security patches or not. This machine has been virus free for two years+ now and never gets any spyware crud. But I use Firefox and keep it up to date and Thunderbird for my email. It's kept up to date also. It's usually just winders users that use IE and OE that call me saying can you fix my machine...and normally they have more damn crud in there than you can shake a stick at. Sometimes format C and reinstall is their only recourse....unless they want to pay me for all that time killing off spyware and Virus.Usually they aren't too keen on that.But I also have a router on this machine that stops lots of stuff. Uses both NAT and
SPI which doesn't allow much of anything to come in here. So I don't use winders dippy firewall either. And I keep my AV up to date.Before I got this Satellite Broadband we were on Dial up and I used Sygate then. It didn't annoy me too much and it stopped outgoing and incoming crud.

Even though not much can run in the background anymore this damn game was down to 76,400 meg of ram available after 4 hours of play tonight.  But then some of the IT's say that's not a bad thing, you shouldn't have excess memory.....then gamers argue you need more ram and more ram.....so who's to say?

I got mad and uninstalled my AV yesterday. Between the router, Firefox, Thunderbird, and not being stupid, I'm safer than your average idiot WITH an AV. But even if you don't use IE, you need to keep windows updated with critical updates. You don't need to keep the service running, you just need to remember when it's the 2nd Tuesday of the month and do it by hand. There are 3 zillion holes in Windows that have nothing whatsoever to do with IE or OE.

(I am currently running a 30 day trial of Nod32, but if I'm not happy with that, I WILL run completely without an AV. I'm sick of them sucking up all my resources)

I guess that's one benefit of dialup: I just shut down my a.v. and firewall before loading TS2.

katenigma
 There are several good "free" AV's out there. AVG (www.grisoft.com), AVAST (www.avast.com) and
Bitdefender(Which is the #1 ranked AV) www.bitdefender.com
I use Avast at the moment. Long as it doesn't annoy me too much and isn't a resource hog it gets to stay.
My huband has F Secure which was free with WIldblue (Satellite Internet provider)

I'm not concerned about winders.. it'll be ok, if not I'll install Linux and be done with it. Dual boot so I can play Sims and winders will never see the net. Just keep it around to play the SIms on.

ZiggyDoodle

I had dial up until December 2006. Reallllllly Slooooooooow dial up.No DSL or cable where I'm at so we bit the bullet and had Satellite installed. When I had it I killed the firewall and the AV also. I kill the AV when I'm playing Sims even now. ...Firewall no, have to kill the router to do that and my husband would freak.

have you tried avast!, the free version works great  http://www.avast.com/
I've been using it for years now.

I think I've tried all the free ones already, and had one problem or other. AVG doesn't play well with Eprompter, which I use to read my mail.  It's text-only, and lets me delete things before they even touch my machine. Since it's also small, I let it run constantly, checking every 5 minutes. And I can't tell AVG to IGNORE it.  >:( It used to lock up my old laptop completely. I figure if Steve Gibson, renowned security expert, can run without an AV, and says you can do so safely as long as you're not stupid, I can too.  ;) I have high speed, but I don't care about turning it off while gaming, even, since I'm behind a router. The problem is that CERTAIN AV's turn themselves back on, even after you've turned them off (I watched McAfee do it!)

Lol.

Gibson is certainly clever, but he has very little understanding of what security risks really are. He's pretty wacko, and unfortunately, so are most of his followers.

Remember the "raw sockets" and UPnP crusades?

Gibson is a very amusing read, but don't take him seriously.

 It wouldn't bother me to run without the AV as much as it would to run w/o the firewall. Got to have a good firewall on.Dial up it doesn't matter when your playing. Your not online anyway.
That's the trouble with AV it takes over. I refuse to use Norton as it screws with the system, McAfee is terrible and also screws with the system (Used it once long ago and had more problems than you could imagine) I used AVG for a long time then when I redid this machine I put Avast in here. It does not suck the resourses like most of the AV's. When I would turn off the AV before AVG usually had around 13 to 18 megs used, Avast is more like 1 to 2 megs used in running processes.

The one your trying out NOD32 is a good AV though. So is Kasperskys.

Jordi
Lots of people don't like Steve Gibson. But he does shake things up and has been right many times.


All this being said this damn game crashed late last night and for no reason at all. Sound went to stammering and boom there it went.
 
Exception time: 03/10/2007, at 00:10:36.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 3116 (0x00000c2c).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSBin\Sims2EP5.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP5
Application/module version: 1.7.0.145
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 40 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT

I'd been playing about 2 hours at the Viego house. Baffles me what it is. Gal in another thread is having some major glitches....I Downloaded her logs.She's got object errors, Audio errors....etc. I only have Audio errors. That's something this game has vanilla, tons of audio errors.

I remember "Raw Sockets", but I didn't take that particular claim seriously. *I* *LIKE* my raw sockets, thank you very much. Raw sockets, like raw meat, are the proper way for sockets to be, and to hell with those wussies. UPnP, though? Never trusted it. Another open port I don't need. DELETED!

I said I'd ask about the memory problem with this game. So I posted the glitch on my favorite HardwareBBS

Here's my tech friends reply:
Connie,

So you are running 1 GB in the system and it still doesn't work right... Can you check whether that version of the SIMs has the option of a dedicated scratch file that needs to be configured? It looks like you are simply running out of memory, and the fact that you still have 160 MB free doesn't really mean that that is enough for processing the next block of data. In other words, it seems like your memory usage is growing in a somewhat exponential way with each "block of events" requiring more memory than the one before and you could be running out of space in that the next number of events requires more than 160 MB of free memory.

This is not necessarily a memory leak, rather a feature of the game but I don't play SIMs so I don't know for sure.

My other friend there also said this:

I had to upgrade my system to 2GB to stop HL2:Episode One from crashing randomly during autosave/level-load routines. I cringe to think of a fully-expanded Sims2 set running with only 1GB.


So that all being said and I've sent them my latest complete error log and the one posted in another thread by another gal, more than likely if you don't have 2 gig of ram in your machine you're going to have a major glitch with Seasons+ all the rest of the expansions with less than 2 gig of ram in a machine. It's going to be hard on a machine with 2 gig in it if it's a game feature and not a memory leak.

EA's system requirements must be for S2 base + Seasons and don't run anything else.??????


We'll see if they come up with any other ideas....after they read the complete error logs. The one friend is a memory expert.

Played last night and checked the free RAM while I was in Uni with two YAs fishing at the park.  Total of 10 Sims on the lot (using the swings, etc.) and it started to rain.  Cacheman reported 986 available RAM.  Much better than some of my earlier stats which left me with only 100MB out of the two gig.

Am wondering if adding more RAM would have any benefits.

I'm going to load this game on my husband's machine later this week and see what it does. That would let me know if maybe something else is going on or if it's just a ram need. It was down to 71 meg when I closed it last night and I hadn't played it very long. Might have another glitch somewhere that's effecting it.

I'll do that while he's at work...he'll never notice. ;D

Hahaha that reminds me of the time my BF banned me from installing Sims 1 and then Sims 2 (when it first came out) on his computer. So I just installed Bodyshop and downloaded millions of outfits+objects, installed photoshop to make some clothes and skins. He then helped me fix my own computer and add RAM :D

I'm running on lower specs than most people (1.1GHz AMD Duron, 512MB RAM, GeForce 5200 FX) and Seasons (as well as Half-Life 2) run fine. Neither have crashed (apart from the random system crashes that seem to plague my system these days, but these occasionally happen even when explorer.exe is the only major application running). Half-Life 2 suffers a couple of seconds worth of freezing and audio stuttering when auto-saving/loading levels, but Seasons runs smoothly now that I've removed a lot of CC.

EDIT: "autor-saving"?

b]Venusy[/b]

Well that lets ya know it will run on 512 meg of ram. Even HL2...I shall let Ludi know that. Make his day
since he upped to 2 gigs for HL2. ;D

I have some other funny glitches showing up on this machine over the past week so it maybe something else going on. It's not cold booting right, have to hit reset after I hit power to boot up. Last time I had that glitch was on a Shuttle NF2 MB that had a power problem with the AGP slot. Would not boot with an FX5700 in there without hitting the reset switch, then I put this GF6600 on it and it has the seperate power plug for the video card and that damn board booted everytime. Now my daughter has the board
with a 9200 RadeonSE on it and it boots everytime. But the onboard sound on that board sucks so she finally lost the sound alltogether and I put my Hercules Fortissimo III sound card on it, killed the onboard and all is right with the world again.I really would like that sound card in this machine. AC97 can be  power hungry. But I can hear it switch to software emulation when Sims2 is loading up.Which is what it needs to be using.

THis machine has been showing up with some really odd glitches. Progressing I think. So now looking for
those problems and possibly when I find the fix for those it may fix the Sims2 glitches. Was backing up the HDD this afternoon, put everything importent on my "F" Drive, then decided I'd copy all the files in My Documents to a DVD and it says it can't copy the files. WTF is that? Was faxing a document the other day and was going to add the number to speed dial (My printer is a Lexmark X6170) and the Fax setup utility says it can't locate the printer??? Printer is online and prints just fine. USB, but USB works just fine.WTF is that one? Winders decides to now boot to a log in screen and I'm the only user on this machine? Huh? For 8 months it boots to my destop and now it wants me to log in? Drvie is testing ok, it's a 160 gig HDD, 8 meg cache
and runs slower than my old 60 gig drive with a 2 meg cache. Shouldn't but does. So maybe these round cables are having a glitch...going to switch them here in a few and see if things get better.That is if I can boot this bad baby back up. I'm getting really annoyed here....because these glitches usually take some time to locate. Power supply is a 440 Watt Thermaltake which should be adequate for this hardware. Husband has my 500Watt supply because his board can't use the new 24 pin connector, it's got too wide a clip and seems to bend a capacitor if you try to plug it in. Geeze. Never ends.....you get them all going
and then the damn things get picky.

I recently tried Avast!. I saw that AVG's free software had changed and become more idiot friendly and less tweakable, so I thought I'd give Avast! a go.

I booted up my PC the next time after I installed it, only to discover it had set the Windoze automatic updates to 'on'. When I went to shut down the PC it told me it was installing update 1 of 5, don't turn it off. 9 hours later, when I got home from work, it still said that. Apparently that is a Microsoft issue, there's a dialogue box hiding behind the shutdown that no-one can see to click.

Anyway, that's not all Avast! did without asking. It turned on a bunch of services I had disabled - you know - all the bloody remote-control stuff MS leaves so they can hijack your PC at will. Plus it turned on other stuff I don't remember right now.* Took me about 15 minutes to go back and turn off all the crap it had turned on without asking. So Avast! lasted less than 24 hours on my PC.

I've been recommended Nod32.

However I don't have a virus checker running constantly, I turn it on once a week for a scan when I do the housekeeping, the backups, defrags and so on. If you don't use IE with a million spyware toolbars and make sure you virus scan downloads & emails, I reckon it's pretty safe. The only virus I ever had was given to me by a techie who didn't virus check at all!

Edit:* Avast! turned on Windoze bloody Security Centre and Firewall too.

witch

It doesn't have windoze auto downloads set to go on my machine. Just it's autodownloads and so far it hasn't messed with any settings. If it had I'd have sent it packing. But I turn  that stuff off in Component Services, Services Local by setting auto updates to disabled. Also that damn Security Center thingy that came with SP2.

When I intend to play the Sims, I created a cmd file that stops a whole bunch of non-critical services, as well as stops a bunch of exe that I don't need.  Stuff like Mcafee AV (which you CAN stop, but you need to close 3 services, most especially the framework service, otherwise it will restart itself).  I shut down the ipod stuff, and a bunch of others I can't recall at the moment.

Example :

net stop "network associates mcshield"
net stop "network associates task manager"
net stop "McAfee Framework Service"
net stop "ipod service"
net stop "Security Center"
net stop "Wireless Zero Configuration"
net stop "Automatic Updates"
net stop "Computer Browser"

etc....

and to clean up, I shut down a bunch of exe's i don't need.

taskkill /f /IM ituneshelper.exe
taskkill /f /IM updaterUI.exe
taskkill /f /IM shstat.exe

If you have never done this before you only need to create a notepad file and save it with the cmd extension.  You run it like you would any program.

Why not simply just disable the services ?  Because I'm too lazy to restart the service if I want to use whatever functionality it provides.  It also lets you run a sort of "standard" and "lean and mean" type of configuration without too much bother.  Unless you consider clicking on an icon after booting too much bother.

Of course they ARE critical services that you can't shut down.  Best to do a little research on the net to find out what they do, before killing them.  But the good part of shutting down services using a cmd file, is that if you make a mistake and you break something, you simply have to restart your computer and everything will be fine.

I'm nowhere near Seasons running up to NL on my laptop which has recently decided to start throwing this exception at me when I try and save. It's a recent development. I also grabbed a copy of Life Stories from TPB which gives me the same exception code on loading so I haven't actually played it yet. I would love to know what's causing it. The guys running SETI@home seem to think it's related to having a screensaver and a lot of people playing various different games think it's nVidia related.
I tried a few things including taking out all CC (including my awesome hacks), deleting My Documents\Sims 2 folder, uninstalling and reinstalling the whole game, uninstalling lots of other stuff, cleaning up the registry, defragging both hard drives. I can play but can't save so it gets old pretty quickly and would love to find a solution.
Any suggestions would be welcome.

I can relate to the "Save" problem. It crashed last night when saving. Oh cool, something new in crashdom. >:(

I'm going to load it up here in a few and make some changes in ingame settings and then see what it does.
Let you know about Nvidia then. Because these will change the game default graphics settings.If my memory is correct, before you had to set all the fancy shamsy game setting manually. Now I notice everything is preset by how the game determines your graphics card's ability to run everything. That could be some of the problem.

angelyne

That's probably good when you have lots of local processes running, but my list is very short and doesn't
have many megs of ram useage involved. I just don't have a bunch of stuff running on this computer in the background other than XP junk which you can't shut down.Explorer.exe uses the most ram of anything running.

Was this directed at me?
I was only saying what some people think it is as there seems to be no consensus out there. I have an integrated chip, not even a card. The bits I did read had people trying various different nVidia drivers to no avail.
If it is a memory access issue, which makes sense, what can I possibly do to fix it?
I wonder of this is one of the wonderful Windoze security fixes. I used to have them off but now have them on notify and recently let a batch through.

I had many disabled services which only Avast! could have turned on. I installed nothing else and all this happened after the install, during the same computing session. I don't like wrestling software for control of my PC!  ::)

I had Security Centre disabled. I didn't try disabling Avast! auto updates, it didn't last long enough on my machine after it touched things without asking.

witch
 I have a friend that had nothing but trouble with Avast. I don't but she did. Go figure. Maybe it's just how you hold your mouth when you install it ??? ??? ???

Lana B,

Maybe for everyone on the Nvidia glitch. But readjusting graphics settings didn't help overall. Still crashed. But I did have more ram free, but then it went on a steady decline after playing for an hour.

I have a scheme...my son has a Radeon X800 Video card in his machine and 2 gig of ram.A64 processor. So my goal is to convince him to load this game and see how it plays on his machine. He's got a glitch in WOW right now anyway. No sound....has sound everywhere else but not in WOW. Since he's layed off from work I ought to be able to caputre him and get him to do this.

Here's what I'm playing, Sims2,UNI,NL,OFB,FFS, GL,PETS and Seasons, plus 100 meg in the DL folder.
Is everyone else running that much? Only thing I don't have is the Holiday pack.

My thought is if the game runs aok on his machine and doesn't crash, then we can retest with 1 gig of ram in it and see what gives. If it still runs and doesn't crash, then I'll figure it's with a Nvidia card that's causing the crashes. Maxis has done a workaround in the config file for your computer in logs for Nvidia cards. Something there might be conflicting with the card's drivers and causing the crash. Might not affect later drivers than I have, but since my drivers worked just fine through Pets it might cause a conflict with those drivers.

Same here, minus FFS.  Keeping my DL folder to just under one gig.  All patches in except Pets, which I kicked out.

Am guessing the game will run great on your son's system - because of the card he has.

Not having any problems at all since the DWF error was cleared up; in fact, am enamored with the very lush graphics of Seasons and the incredible detail.  Hope you get to enjoy it soon. 

ZiggyDoodle

Your video card is an ATI isn't it?

I've got all patches in including Pets.

Got to finish up a couple of tax returns for clients. Then I'll corner my son...and give him the "you can do this for mommy" spiel. ::) Then I should maybe know something.

ATI Radeon X850XT - thanks to Hegelian's recommendations in the upgrading/building a computer sticky.

 (Ziggy hugs Hegelian and gives him a juicy kiss on the cheek)

Thought you didn't have a Nvidia card.

Well my son has the game at the moment. ;D I got this "look" from him, but he said he'd run it.
Probably cost me....like hey mom figure out why WOW has no audio.....but should answer some of my questions, I hope.

Believe it or not we can't get the game installed on my son's computer. It put in S2 but stopped with UNI
saying it had a read error for some lanuguage file, German I think, WTF don't need that when I'm installing in English. So we tried NL and same thing. Gave it up. Not going in on that computer.It installs every other game on that computer so I have no clue there. Guess try it on my husband's computer.

My Granddaughter had a simiilar problem trying to put NL in hers (She just has S2 in there) and it wouldn't install saying it had some kind of audio error. They got the same error on her friends computer so they gave up. >:(

Some CD or DVD drives have a problem reading the EA/Maxis disks because of the copy protection.  My laptop is like that -- the solution I've followed is to copy the CD to the hard disk and install from there. I have a 'disk images' folder off the root, and then each disk for the particular EP/SP gets copied to its own directory labeled 'disk1', 'disk2', etc.  It's important to name them that way, or the install program won't be able to find them.

Put the first CD back in the drive so the install can read it to verify its valid, and then start the install from the hard disk.  Fast, and usually gets around the problem.

I've got it in on my husband's. Didn't get play all that long. But it had more free ram in Seasons than it's ever had on mine after an hour of play. Now he has a Nvidia card, but it's an FX5700 128 meg card. WHen I installed it on his, I loaded the gave at varying intervals.
NL, Goth House:
Page File 586meg, Free Memory was 332+ meg
OFB with GL & FFS
761PG FIle    Free memory was 280+ meg
Pets
638PF and 332+ free memory
Seassons
639PF 277 Free memory at laoding Viego in Rosblossomhills
after 30 minutes of play
696PF 346+ Free Memory
After 1 hour of Play
696PF 290 Free Memory
(2 SIm days into it)
692 Page File 272+ free memory

Game Setting under Graphics are greyed out for the shadows I believe. Those have been greyed out before when Glamor Life was loaded, weren't greyed out in Pets and are now greyed out in Seasons.
On my machine they are not greyed out.

Will try and play tonight for a longer period of time.

jsalemi

I thought about that with his CD-ROM, have to ask him which one he was using. The DVD Burner or the
Toshiba CD-ROM. The Tosihiba should be able to read anything, mine always could. Annie has a Toshiba on hers and I have a NEC DVD Burner in mine and my husbands. Maxis's Safedisk 2  can be a bitch for some CD or DVD Roms to read.I don't know if WOW uses Safedisk or securerom copy protection.

It's possible that the Toshibas are too old to read the newer Safedisk correctly though. I didn't put this NEC in until last fall, so I know the Toshiba installed everything through NL.

if I remember correctly, shadows are always greyed out unless you are on a Lot.

Could be, but I'm pretty sure they are greyed out on a lot also. But I'd have to go look. I'm sure I checked the setting in the Goth house before I loaded seasons and then in the Viego house in Roseblossomhills.Which they weren't greyed out with all expansions on that particular machine. Just with Glamor Life and with Seasons.

Now I finally decided to try new drivers on this machine. So bit the bullet and put the latest Nvidia drivers(93.71) in it. It's been playing, hasn't crashed yet, but time will tell. Free Ram is not anywhere near what it is on the other machine and on this one I shut down the AV on his I don't. The most free I've had on this machine at different intervals is 215+ on first load to the neighborhood and then it has dropped to around 158 to 168+/-.

I read the other post on the problem with the ATI drivers. Hmmmm
at this rate everyone will have to use a SIS Unicrome video card.Blah! If the latest catalyist drivers are glitching in Sims2.So much for switching cards.

Maxis needs to get it's driver issues straightened out.

My ATI's working super.  That last poster is working with a new system.  Sweet graphics card but no mention was made of the OS.  Could Vista be involved?

ZiggyDoodle

She said she had put in the latest ATI drivers or the new system came with them. So could be they aren't happy campers. Which one's ar you using?

I finally changed my Nvidia drivers as I said and I played for 2 1/2 hours tonight. Checked the ram before I quit and it was up to 239 meg open. That's a major improvement.At the 2 1/2 hour time before it was down to 70 meg and would start the audio stammering and crash.

After reading EA's readme on video card issues, that's a known issue with a 6600 card, which I have. (Audio stammering that is). That's why I changed the drivers. The link I gave earlier in this thread was pretty specific about why you get an Access Violation error.Game bug or Drivers. I have shut my graphics down some, no shadow (I don't like them anyway) and I don't display the neighborhood houses(I never did before in Pets either, game seemed lag in rotaing the houses if I had that on) But that's all I have turned off.

So unless this game goes south over the next few days of play, I'm reasonably sure it was  a driver issue with the video card. Surprisingly the 93.71 drivers are working quite well. I chose those because they came out in November and I felt those were the one's Maxis used when they were making the Seasons expansion pack. That being said if I were running a Nvidia card and having graphics issues or weird crashes that gave you the Access Violation in the log file, then I'd switch to that driver and see if I had an improvement.ALso make sure your sound drivers are up to date.My graphics overall are damn good in the game. And yes I can see the fish in the ponds.

Got fingers and toes crossed it's a wrap with this game. But I have seen posts where people have played for a week and then started having crashes left and right. Guess we'll see in time.

Thanking everyone for their input in this thread. Appreciate it.

Warning: I am not technical. This is opinion, and I won't be bothered if you choose to ignore it.

That said, if you're stuck with a laptop and it has an NVidia card, none of the NVidia drivers or tweaked drivers out there will work, you'll have to nag your laptop manufacturer instead, and probably have to use IE rather than FF, Opera, or NS/Moz to get it.

Old news to most of you, I'm sure.

When asking for driver/card help, I mentioned I had a laptop, but got advice which would have been great for a desktop, but it did not help me because I was using a different set-up. If you're following all the excellent advice and getting no result, even after checking for User Idiocy Issues, and you have a laptop, then voila, that may be the main problem right there.

Also, EA will use the fact that you are brazen enough to use a laptop in order to refuse you tech support, even if the issue you need help with has nothing to do with your machine type. Too bad I need one for grad school. Lugging a desktop back and forth isn't feasible.

If you do manage to load your game in and up the settings graphics-wise, the game may not immediately barf, and may in fact run like a dream for a while, but eventually you will get a barf-up blue screen. The Unofficial Sims 2 Tech Guide (not updated past OFB) has in-game screenies that will help you decide what level of detail you can or can't live without. Some of the highest settings improve very little past medium settings. Why stress your card if the payoff is so inconsequential?

I CAN run on highest settings for a couple of hours (on a good day) but see no real difference visually lowering most of them. And that usually means longer gameplay time.

Lorelei,

Laptops are different critters. They weren't ever built to play  these type of games. Wasn't their purpose. They do use different video cards in them than in desktops. Laptop processors and Video cards are special because of power issues.Even the HDD are different. If your ordering parts for them they have to be "Laptop" parts.
Everything put in them has to be able to use low power. After all they have to be able to run on batteries more than a few minutes. You buy a laptop because you want to be able to take it with you and use it anywhere. That means places where there are no outlets.

Gaming rigs are special critters, even for Desktops. Not every desktop is created equal either. Many buy
straight off the shelf units expecting them to run any big game out there and find they fall flat on their face.
Many of those have good enough processors, but fall short with the video cards and Power Supplies and amount of ram. Big video cards are power hungry devils. Those running crossfire or SLI most certainly need huge power supplies. Not to mention 3 or 4 Hard Drives,maybe 3 CD/DVD ROM burners, huge processors and large amounts of ram.Super sound cards and the list goes on.
A real gaming rig will set you back mega bucks.Go to Dell or Alienware and check the price of one or go to Newegg and price all the components seperately. Whew!

I just have a beefed up run of the mills desktop. By saying beefed up, it has a decent video card, decent amount of ram, and a decent processor and a fair sized HDD in it and a PSU that should be able to handle everything under a load. When I upgrade I will have to buy a bigger meaner PSU to accomodate the new
power hungry componets. Which will cost me big bucks because elcheapo PSU's aren't worth a flip.


EDIT: Dell has a gaming Notebook. The XPS M1710. Nice pricetag with it and I assume the XPSm2010 is capable of running games also.

For whatever it's worth:

Cons, your problems sound exactly like what I've been having--well on my sons PC. The reset at cold booting, the sound issues, etc. Sound worked fine in headphones, but the desk top speakers wouldn't work at all or there was so much static, it was worthless. I looked and looked for conflicts, reinstalled drivers, went thru the BIOS, etc etc.

I was playing the 'why why why' game for 3 weeks! Happened across a bbs where ONE guy said: EAX and sound blaster hate each other. I don't even know what EAX is. But I had seen it in the hundred driver installs I'd done trying to fix the problem. I run Xp SP1 only with a sound blaster live card.  Creative has recently stopped supporting this card as it's old old. The last driver set they offer bundles with the EAX shit.

That one post directed me to a page with kX drivers. I unistalled everything Creative and installed the kX stuff. Ta da! No resetting, great (for an old card) sound. Everything is fine.

So maybe your problem is similiar? Hope this helps somebody.....

MutantBunny

No won't help me but maybe others. :) I have AC97 sound. My sound glitch seems to have been caused by the video driver. (Yes that can happen)

However creative sound cards can be another horse. Which reminds me, to ask my son if he's updated his for his audigy. He usually does, but he lost sound in WOW. Possible a WOW patch doesn't like his drivers. He has sound everywhere else.But I'm not going there. He's a pretty good Computer tech in his own right.But right now he's baffled. So as you see not always EA Sim2 causing weird things to happen.

Lorelei

I found that ATI has begin to update drivers for laptops. So you might want to check. Before only the manufacturer of your laptop had any driver updates. Nvidia I don't think has started providing laptop video drivers yet. Or at least I didn't find anything saying they had on the first search.

Absolutely correct. So I consider it a victory that I managed to finally get Sims 2 to run on mine. Took a newer driver, but it finally works (knock wood). All EPs, two SPs, med-high settings, lots of mods/hacks, overly large downloads folder that I'm actively paring down.

Lorelei,

That is a victory. Good work. :) Sometime though others with laptops may not be as fortunate. Depending on who built the laptop and if they update the drivers for the unit.

As I said above, ATI is starting to put some Laptop Video drivers up for Download.They can always check and see if their Notebook is listed. Those with Nvidia cards aren't going to be so lucky. Those are still left up to the manufacturer of the Notebook.

Here's a site that lets you figure out how big a PSU you need to run everything in your computer.
They're updating the calculator at the moment, but it should be an interesting experience for everyone to put the numbers in.(No not for Notebook users) A PSU that's too small can cause lots of headaches too.

http://www.journeysystems.com/power_supply_calculator.php

But there are "desktop replacement" laptops and laptops built specifically with gaming in mind. Mine is a desktop replacement rig...crap battery life (about 2 hours) and weighs 10 lbs, but it's taken every game I've thrown at it so far.

Theoretically ATI doesn't support driver updates on it, either (Mobility Radeon card)--their detection software kept saying my computer wasn't compatible. I went with a late '06 set of drivers I dug out of the depths of Google instead of the '07 set ATI had posted...they work great. And no, I don't get support from EA either, since I'm running the game on an "unsupported" system...but why would I want help from them anyway? They'd just tell me to delete my custom content and reinstall.  ::)

It's entirely possible to get TS2 running--well--on a laptop if you're willing to shell out the money. And stay away from Nvidia.

You call 2 hours of battery life crap? 2 hours of battery life is godlike. Mine has an impressive battery life of one half of ten minutes. On the other hand, it *DOES* rule over other lappies with its 42-pound, allegedly portable fist.

I am not awesome in technical matters, but I am a WoW player and I might be able to help with some son bribery here.
Has he tried messing with the "sound channels" slider under Audio Options? It was added recently, and it's been set wrong by default for quite a few people who have had to pull it towards the left side to get their sound working right again.
http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww01656p1 (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww01656p1)
If all else fails, Blizzard's tech support is generally more useful than EAs and actually makes an effort to fix stuff.  ::)

prattle

I emailed that right to him. Hope that's it. Thank you :)


However on another note, I'm right back to the drawing board with Sims2. It started crashing again, frequently. I even tried the boolprop shaders false at the neighborhood screen and that doesn't help either.
Damn game.  Got to be the 6600 card and the Nvidia drivers Sims2 Season hate each other problem.
Graphics are great in the game thoguh, rotate quite nicely, just crashes frequently. Blah! Think I'll just see how long it lasts on the other machine with the FX5700 card and the old drivers.