Thanks guys. I never did conclusively discover the problem - I ended up totally wiping my hard drive and starting completely fresh. (I needed to do it for other reasons, so it wasn't totally annoying.) It's finally working again, so, whatever. I am pretty sure it was the whole downloaded a crappy torrent/never updated it/unable to patch thing, though. Anyway, thanks for helping!

Not a modder, have no interest in being a modder. Which RTFM? Awesomemod, EA/Sims 3, or my torrent?

I've been lurking here for two years. And searches for "Sims 3 crashes" aren't exactly helpful - I did search, I just wasnt totally positive what to look for. Hence my asking for a little help.

Edit: Checked RTFM for Awesomemod - feel mildly idiotic for not being psychic. Not totally, because it still did this before I ever installed Awesomemod and also when I took it out completely.

My problem: Sims 3 loads up just fine, until I get to the screen where I can create a new game/load a previously saved game. Even then it works just fine, but as soon as I hit the checkmark to start the saved game loading, it crashes to the desktop with no warning and no error message.

Other info: I have the very latest version of Awesomemod and no other mods. I used the installer for dummies for the framework. I have the newest Razor1911 torrented version; I had the leaked Reloaded version until today (hadn't played in a while and decided to start again so I updated everything). Not sure how important this is, but my game version is 1.0.631.00002.

I've removed the mods folder, booted from the launcher and directly from the .exe, booted while connected to the internet and while disconnected - nothing has made any difference at all.

If you need to know anything else, let me know. I'm not totally sure what's meaningless and what's useful here.

It's probably a fairly simple fix, but I haven't been able to find a solution and I've been combing threads looking for anything even remotely related for the past hour or so  - nothing has helped.

Oh, fantastic! Thanks again!

Eep! I thought I'd looked thoroughly enough, oops! This is still helpful, though, thank you! So far I haven't noticed anything besides the clock and the names, but if anything else comes up I don't mind doing a total reinstall. I've been meaning to for a while.

I got a, ahem, free version of the Celebrations SP (I am SO GLAD I didn't pay $20 for that, by the way.) and after I installed it and entered my hood, I noticed that all the sims I had previously created in CAS had new names, first and last. In a couple cases, they weren't even the right gender. For example, a male sim named Edge Copeland became Gretchen and a female named Erin Flay became Cristopher. Everyone's born-in-game children and grandchildren had their original and correct names. I also notced after I installed that my in-game clock had switched to 24-hour time.

Obviously this isn't a big deal, since it's pretty easily fixed with SimPE and doesn't really impact my gameplay but I was just wondering if anyone had any idea why this might have happened. Is it possible that maybe the version I got was European? I only mention that as a possibility because I noticed that the language list at install contained a large list of European languages, and my (paid for) EPs and base game had a significantly shorter list. I don't know why this would have caused what it did though.

I think if I had to choose between being homeless and living in house with those roofs/dormers I would totally choose being homeless.

I would hate to see an UNclassy version...