I've had that bug too. Actually off and on for as long as I can remember. Comes and goes. Got to be a Maxis glitch. Doesn't seem top be related to hacks, because I had it without any hacks in the game.

Scratch, let me know how the game does with the 9200SE.

Yeah the crying over roaches has go to go. And the boo hooing over a death is totally annoying also the wake up in the middle of the night when they reach full sleep bar is also annoying. Aggh!

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.

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

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.

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.

ANM

Assuming this is a desktop machine, there was a problem with ATI drivers doing just what you describe
with the old 6.2 Catalyist Drives and WIN98.

PROBLEM: When running with the 6.2 catalyst drivers on Windows 98, the game will freeze on loading.
CARDS: Radeon 9200
Restoring your system to 5.9 Catalyst drivers should resolve the issue

That being said, if this is Vista it's possible that the old problem has resurfaced with the New OS and the latest drivers. Keep in mind Vista wasn't out yet when EA was developing this game.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thought you didn't have a Nvidia card.

Well my son has the game at the moment. 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.

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.

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.

Did you uninstall each expansion pack in C:Programs EA Games? I found each damn expansion has to be seperately removed, one at a time. Then it should reinstall after you do that  unless the uninstaller won't remove the corrupted one. In that case, you may have to manually delete it and clear it from the registry.

Maybe then it would install? Or maybe not...it's an EA game.

Well I don't have graphical glitches, however as you can tell from my thread, I have plenty of other glitches.

And I agree with this statement:
I just want to be able to play the goddamned game. This is getting ridiculous. *rips hair out*


Don't know what to tell you to do either....Nvidia card or not, it should play at least after toning down the settings. I tried that today, even though my card can handle all the bells and whistles...well I did have more ram available, but the SOB sound went to stammering and boom it crashed. About after a couple hours of play.

Personally I think the game code is buggy as hell. But that's just me.

Hope you solve it....

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

 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.

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.