Say what you will, but the game is working, which is better than what was going on before.

I was using sarcasm. I thought that was obvious.

With the way they treat their consumers, that would be my guess. I read on the Sims 3 forums that they tried to placate a player who was having unresolved crashing issues with some kind of freebie (the person didn't say what that freebie was). Really, freebie? When you can't play a game, yet they give you a freebie? Insulting intelligence much.

Sad thing is, I see a lot of adults who OMGzers over those badges. If their customer base acts like 12ers, I guess that's how they respond.

I guess I'm mean if I say that I hope people throw flaming bags of llama poo at EA when the new EP explodes like I have a feeling it will. Oh well. Poor llamas.

I like how easy TS2 was to create with. With TS3, I can't be bothered to make CC. With TS2, I hated that it took forever to load each family. With TS3, it's much faster to load, and the open neighborhood is something I wish TS2 had.

I still hate the look of TS3 sims (especially the black eyes in the mirror--*shiver*), but I hated the look of TS2 sims too, until default skins and eyes came to be.

I still play TS2 from time to time, but I'm used to the gameplay of TS3 now that my TS2 playing is only on an occasional basis now.

Temp fix is to manually patch after a fresh reinstallation. Avoid the 1.29 patch. It's a lot of work, but it'll allow you to play.

Odd thing is many of my sims don't get pregnant the first time in "Try for Baby". And I've never had one fall pregnant under just Woohoo. lol

"Sims Online" was a massive failure, and this will be too, as well as that dumb Facebook game. Can you imagine the people who will have massive explosions of unwanted gameplay in their games? A hater deciding to crash someone's game? Hopefully, it won't be that easy, but with EA you never know.

Yeah, it sounds like the patch. Apparently EA has been made aware of the issue but has not addressed it. Knowing EA, it probably won't be fixed with the next expansion. In the meantime, if you find it's not a CC issue and you've tried everything else that is suggested (including adding TS3W.exe to the DEP), you can try a fresh reinstallation and manually patch, avoiding the latest patch. It's only a temporary fix, but in the meantime you can at least play. Good luck.

Your problem has nothing to do with AM. If you play the game long enough after having removed AM, you'll find that the freezing and sound issues will begin again. I started having the sound and freezing issues after the 1.29 patch was installed into my game. After reinstalling the game and avoiding 1.29, I have those issues no longer. Unfortunately, that means I can also no longer have AM in my game, but at least I can play without freezing and crashing again.

That's because there are no results for the problem, save for reinstalling (including wiping Sims 3 from the registry after uninstallation) and avoiding the 1.29 patch. There's a small band of us that have had no luck getting the crashing to stop. The Sims 3 site is full with the so-called fixes, and they do work for some, but not all. Because there seems to be only a small number of us who have crashing, there won't be a patch to fix it, according to EA. If you've not looked at the Tech section on EA's forum to see about fixing your game, I'd suggest you do so. Maybe one of those things will work for you. If not, you're stuck with the rest of us who either: a. can't play or b. managed to reinstall and avoided the 1.29 patch.

There was a link to the 1.24 version as of a few days ago, but it gave a 404 error. Actually, there were three mirror links to the 1.24 version of AM. Pescado has in the last few days deleted that post, but if you look you'll find proof that it was there at one time. Sheesh, and you told ME that I didn't search well enough. hehehe

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

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

I feel your pain. Good luck to you! I'm playing without 1.29 patch due to constant game crashes, and as a result I'm playing without AM until EA puts out another patch to fix their newest mess. Having to play the game without AM is a pain in the tail.

I did look. This is the questions and helpful tips thread; if I had looked and found, I wouldn't ask here. Pes's updates on the AM download page don't include the version for 1.26. He includes one for 1.24, but like I said all the mirror links give a 404 error. And the newest update is for 1.29, the update I want to avoid.

If you'd like screenshots of my Advanced search results to show me where I might have overlooked something, I'll gladly provide them. TIA.

I've had to reinstall my game to avoid patch 1.29 (i.e. I don't have patch 1.29 as a result) because of incessant crashing, and I've been trying to find the pre-pets-patch-phail AM, but it gives me a 404 page when I tried to download the 1.24 version mirrors. The beta page also doesn't give a link to the pre-pets-borkage version. So I'm wondering, is the current version of AM ok to use on non-1.29'd games? TIA.

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, thanks, guys. Will give your suggestions a try. I'm about to just throw in the towel again. Sims 2 stuff is so much easier to handle; EA has royally screwed themselves over by making it so hard to mod (and then get it to work) this game.

LOL Funny thing is that I've just come back from a nasty virus, thanks to one of those popups "Your system may be affected! Click to run this virus scan!", those crap malware things. So, I ended up having to wipe the PC, so Sims 3 is just newly installed, and CCleaner is one of the programs I've used in addressing issues with my PC. So, that's one step down at least! Patches are also up and running as well.

Followed Rainbow_Brite's suggestion about the Resource.cfg file. It was in both files--base and WA. That was the entire problem. The one thing I didn't try to remove! *headdesk* EA really could've made things easier for us. I hate that they've made it like pulling teeth to mod a game.

Thanks for all of your help, folks! I truly appreciate it!
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ETA: Ok, we're back to square 1 again. After adding in aweconf to my Sims 3 WA/Mods/Packages/Hacks file, I'm back to where I started from. So, I've gone back, checked everything again with my files to make sure that everything was right where it should be, and it is. I'm not sure if I've done something wrong in putting in aweconf or what. So, here's what I did so this might be able to be fixed....

I went to the AwesomeMod Configuration, selected to generate the file, saved it to my desktop then moved it to my WA/Mods/Packages/Hacks file along with awesome package file. Rebooting the game makes it stick to about 1/3 of the way loading and doesn't go any further.

I've got the framework, I've got the d3dx9_31.dll in both the game/bins of WA and the base game. I have the Resource.cfg file in WA and base game. I tried taking it out of the base game and loading, that didn't work. So I just put it back in the base game file. I've got awesome mod in the Hacks portion of WA, and I also tried putting it in the base game hacks section to see if that would help. Nope, nothing, zilch. Checked the Dashboard from MTS, no incompatibilities, no issues showing up there. I've got absolutely no other content in my game, not even EAxis store junk. I've read tutorials, I've tried suggestions from other threads that I thought might help, but I can't figure out what piece of the puzzle I'm missing!

And as for lurking more, I've lurked and lurked and lurked my share, on here, on the Sims 3 site (that doesn't do much good), and on other Sims 3 forums. Unfortunately, most of the time when I can manage to stumble on a situation that I think might be relevant to my situation, I end up finding that there are replies such as, "look around more. You clearly failed." or "Lurk moar, use search." or "READ THE FAQ". It's quite hard to find answers amidst all of the folks replying calling folks n00bs. It's no wonder people can't find answers--they're having to weed through all of the name-calling. That's why I gave up with AwesomeMod last year. I didn't want to deal with being told to read and lurk more. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.

I'm not someone who does a lot of talking--as you can see, I've been a member here for quite some time and the only time I ever post here anymore is when I'm at the end of my rope, google hasn't come through for me, and can't find the answer on my own.

ETA: This is also something I've followed in the past. Just tried and it still doesn't work: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Sims_3_Loading_Crashes
And now I can say that the game will now load about 1/3 of the way and doesn't progress. It also will not close without Ctrl/Alt/Del.

Glad I found this thread. I'd put TS3 away a few months ago after I couldn't stand playing without AwesomeMod anymore. I've never been able to get AwesomeMod to work. I've read all the tutorials that I could find to see if I was doing something wrong, but I've never been able to figure out the problem. I place AwesomeMod in my game file (no other mods, or even ANY other CC, mind you), I start the game, and it crashes before it can even really begin loading. I tried troubleshooting this last year, but eventually gave up because I couldn't find an episode that anyone had that was similar to mine. When I take AwesomeMod out, the game runs fine. But it's hardly worth playing if I can't play every household without watching each one age to elder before I can even play 3 sim days. So Sims 3 has just set dormant in my machine for a long time.

Short of looking like the lone, dumb idiot, I just never posted my issue here. I don't have Windows 7, so I'm sure that it's not necessarily just a Windows 7 issue. I have Vista 32-bit machine.

I'd love to play Sims 3 again--with AwesomeMod--but I just don't know how to make it work.

I am using the monkey installer. :-) Still having the "no disc" error. Installed the patch, then put awesome mod in the Packages/Hacks folder. Not sure what the deal is or what I've done wrong.

Scratch all that. The problem is me..... and the Monkey installer. I have to manually drag the files (right clicking doesn't give me the menu options that it's supposed to), and from my frustration with that instead of dragging the .package of the awesome mod, I drug over the .zip of it. That I can blame on my delirium.

Thanks for the help anyway, folks!

This is all a bit too much for my brain right now. I wish I could blame it on the fact that I'm currently ill, but even without my delirium, I still don't think I'd understand.

Ok... I have Razor1911. I installed the patch as directed in Pescado's link. I installed the AwesomeMod in Electronic Arts/Sims3/Mods/Packages/Hacks. Ran the game, and it's telling me that no disc is found. Well, durr, imagine that. What on earth have I done wrong? Thanks in advance.

It seems to be all intact. I've checked my ISO file size--does 5.55 GB sound right?

Ah, thank you, that is super. I'm installing now, but I've hit another snag in the road.
<snapped picture>

Hitting Ignore on that brings me this:
CRC error: The file C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Caches\TCC_Version.txt doesn't match the file in the setup's .cab file. The medium from which you are running the setup may be corrupted c; contact your software vendor.

AllThumbnails.package is showing corrupted too.

and it just goes on and on....

Finally installed. I had to redo the .iso as somehow it didn't go through completely the first time. Thanks for the help, everyone.

Yes, I saw already. Didn't have to repeat. Thank you for the help. I'm hoping now that I'm not too stupid to figure out what to do next.