It's an ATI Radeon HD 4870 series one, I don't think it's the card that's the problem. The reason I'm asking here is that my boyfriend is a software developer/general computer geek and he's got no idea what the problem is and has already tried several things over the last week to fix it which haven't helped.

Yes, I suddenly noticed that spelling error, fixed now. The problem is, it still freezes in full screen, the full screen has to be used just to get it to load. It freezes no matter which way I play after a while.

Ok, my game will not load in windows mode, it has blotchy black and white squares and never loads no matter how long it's left for. Sometimes it works if I load it in full screen mode and then load it in windows mode.

After playing a while in windows mode, the graphics freeze as though it's paused but you can still hear the game playing. You can click the buttons into build and buy mode and save the game but the dialogue boxes don't show, you need to click where they are from memory. When buy/build is clicked, the music is audible and if you click where you know there are objects then it sounds like they're selected but nothing visible happens. Even when I've clicked from the household to go into neighbourhood view, it hasn't spurred the graphics to change.

I've tried removing CC, driver roll backs and rebooting the computer. I've also tried altering the resolution but that doesn't seem to work either. I hadn't played for a while, I'd been playing black and white 2 and civ 4 but I don't think those could have caused the problem.

To fix China, you can go into the save folder in:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves

Go into your save where it's happened, delete the China files and try again. This will reset China though, all the dungeons will need to be explored again, and you get the opportunities again.

If you don't have AwesomeMod, you could just buy a load of expensive stuff and put it in their inventories to sell when they get to their new lot.

It was one of the folders in the sims 2 folder. It also fixed my other cash register problem. Thank you! 

I haven't tried that, will do. I'm not sure what script or config moderations are. I know that my cameras aren't default and I have altered the scripts for the modular stairs but they weren't a problem before. I have a cheat file obviously but I don't know if that should be removed too. I'll replace the original scripts and force a new EA folder in My Documents.

I found a small reference to this happening somewhere else, the poster said she could use the foundation fine after she reinstaled for about a day and it then stopped working again.

Tried that, it will demolish only the top tile, leaving the walls behind.

Nope, I tried moveObjects and constrain floor elevation, I tried altering the terrain below it, I have removed downloads as well, I forgot to mention that. I even tried the little nuke box.

The problem I have with stage foundation is that I cannot build it (or destroy it in houses which already contain it). When I try to build it, it says:
"Cannot intersect fence or half wall"

and when I try and demolish it, it says:
 "Must remove fences and half walls on stage"

There are no fences or half walls on the entire lot. Even if the first thing I try and build on a new lot is a stage foundation, it doesn't work. I tried building it on a brand new lot which had never had fences or half walls and I still get that message. I can't demolish it with the sledgehammer tool either. Any clue on why the game is doing this?

I'm pretty sure they should have the family icon there anyway, since once married, they are family.

There's a strength training workout on the televisions, it requires no equipment so surely they could have given those animations to the children?

My counters do that, but when I've finished placing them, I grab them up and put them down again without moving them. Then they turn back my chosen colours.

Are you loading it with the sim on the lot? That has caused a couple of crashes for me before and I had to remove the sim and then go into the empty dorm. Is the college dorm new? If so I doubt moving the sim would help. My problem was that the dorm had been previously occupied and I'd moved the sims out while leaving the maid van there. Once deleted the lot was fine.

I haven't added holiday destinations but the limo still doesn't come. I do have other districts attached, downtown, university and shopping districts though.

A couple of hundred sims but it happens even with my new list which has 17 sims on it. It doesn't really bother me because it still works, unless it means something is up with the computer. That would be annoying considering the upgrade I did recently.

If that was aimed at me, I don't have vista and the program does it usually after I ask it to load one of my saved lists. I just assumed it was my computer rather than your program.

Do you just kill the program after it stops responding? It always does it on mine, but if I wait a few minutes it works perfectly, the only downside is that it has "not responding" written in the bar at the top despite the fact that it is responding.

Nope, they're trying to buy easels, books and chessboards. I recently added postcards from MTS2 but it was happening before I added them to the game.

Every time a sim uses a cash register on owned community lots, I get an undefined transition error after a while of successful transactions. From then on, every transaction results in an error message and when I click reset (cancel just brings the error up again) the entire queue and the cashier jump out of what they were doing and the cash drawer of the register remains open. Eventually everyone gets back into the queue and it happens again. The cashier automatically goes back to the register but the jumping causes it too take ages.

I've tried reassigning the cashier and replacing the tills but nothing seems to fix it.

My sim teenager was abducted but everyone in her family believes it was her mother who was abducted, even her. She has memories for her mothers (fake) abduction and for her own (real) abduction. Would it have been a hack which caused it and is it safe to try and alter the memories with simpe so that the correct person will be remembered as being abducted?

Yes, you can remove the ability to do vacation gestures from vacation sims as well as playables with simpe. If you open the neighbourhood and the sim in the sim browser, go to other>memories and in that tab or the next one there's italic text saying that a sim has a token to do the gesture (should be obvious which one). Click on it and click remove because delete apparently doesn't work. Save the changes and that sim should no longer be able to do that gesture. I've managed to neuter all my vacation sims that way and there's been no game blowing up yet fortunately. Obviously it won't affect only enemies and it's a kind of all or nothing thing but I cannot stand the stupid gestures. They made me trash several neighbourhoods from annoyance before.

It's like changing aspiration on the renuyu orb, all your points are set loose again for you to reallocate.

Ta, it didn't occur to me to check the fixes because I just assumed (stupidly) that the UK version would be the same as the US version since the words have the US 'or' rather than the UK 'our' in words like neighbourhood.

I have the body point notification as well but I assumed it was messed up because I had the toddler mirror that builds body skill.