Game's crashin'

[FinkTheFuzzy]

Bear with me here...

Few weeks back I installed OFB. Simple enough, right? Since then the game, and recently my entire system, has been crashin'.  And now, I can't play for more than 5 minutes.

When the game first started crashing, it would just dump me out to the desktop. I got no error message; I was in the game, and then I was out. Eventually, it also started freezin' (this began a few days ago.)

Today, I uninstalled OFB and tried to play NL without using my Pleasantview, instead opting to use the base neighborhood. It still dumps me out to the desktop, within 1 minute of attempted play.

Now, independent of the game crashes are the system crashes. These are relatively new (within the last few days) and involve my monitor shutting off and the system restarting, although the computer itself never turns off.

Before blaming OFB, there were some things I checked. First was the age of my system. I built it specifically to play Sims 2, when it was released in 2004, and I haven't had any problems until now. So, I checked drivers (couldn't find any updates for my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro), registry (some errors, and I've used software to correct), memory (1 GB), hard drive space (now 120/250GBs), spyware (none that I can find), and viruses (none detected.)

…I don't know if there's something I've overlooked where those are concerned. Truth is, my McAfee subscription expired and for about a month, I had no protection. Though not entirely certain about the timing, I'd say the dumping out to my desktop from the game started around the time I no longer had a working anti-virus. Thing is, this also coincides with my installing of OFB. As I'm not proficient with computers, I can't figure it out. I think I may have picked something up during that down time. I've also found that when my computer (or the game freezes) it affects my wireless mouse too. Usually it flickers, and the last few times when I've checked it, that's when the system would restart.

To me this seems to be a hardware issue combined with a memory issues, but I don't know what to do. I've read the posts discussing game crashes after OFB, and I made sure to check everything others have been told to check. Now I'm sort of at the end of my rope. I don't know what to do. Anyone have any ideas?

Now that I think about it, I've also had trouble with a little window that appears on my taskbar. It doesn't actually appear on screen, just on the taskbar, as if I've opened something and it's immediately closed. Months ago, this used to minimize my game, but it stopped. Now it's returned...I have no idea what to do about that either.

So, uh....please help?

[Marvin Kosh]

My guess is that you may have problems with your video drivers, especially with your monitor shutting off and the system spontaneously restarting.  When you install a driver package, it's not necessarily configured for your particular ATI card.  In addition, some of your earlier customisations may be overwritten.

If you know how to adjust your SMARTGART options, you may want to check them and look up what the recommended optimisations for your card are.  I have a different card in the same series but for me turning 'Fast Writes' off helped to improve stability.  Your mileage may vary.

PDF discussing SMARTGART settings

[Bitsy]

Another problem could be that your video card is loose. If it has slid back out of the pci or agp slot a bit then the connection could be sporadic leading to your monitor shutting off and your system rebooting. I would suggest taking off your case and dusting in there (by means of a set of strong lungs or by using a can of air) and pushing your video card and any other add-on devices in and making sure they are secure.

As far as checking for viruses and what not, as long as you do a full system scan with your new virus software it should catch any that you might have gotten during the down time. I would also scan with both adaware and spybot as they each tend to catch things the other might have missed as far as spyware is concerned.

[laylei]

Another problem could be that your video card is loose. If it has slid back out of the pci or agp slot a bit then the connection could be sporadic leading to your monitor shutting off and your system rebooting. I would suggest taking off your case and dusting in there (by means of a set of strong lungs or by using a can of air) and pushing your video card and any other add-on devices in and making sure they are secure.

As far as checking for viruses and what not, as long as you do a full system scan with your new virus software it should catch any that you might have gotten during the down time. I would also scan with both adaware and spybot as they each tend to catch things the other might have missed as far as spyware is concerned.

This is what happened to me. My monitor was randomly shutting off and my system rebooting, and my dad eventually figured out that the video card wasn't sitting in it's slot right. Once he got it in right, the monitor shutting off/system rebooting stopped.

[vilia]

I'm going to tell you my story of OFB, crashing & freezing - this is not to scare you but just to let you know how my issue was resolved.

still reading??

I had a similar problem with freezing, rebooting and general dodgyness. It would stop recognising my mouse and my keyboard and would randomly freeze or reboot.  I had the machine completely rebuilt from scratch to ensure it wasn't a virus that had lodged itself in my machine. It still wasn't working properly so I dusted off my warranty docs and called in the professionals.  It turned out my motherboard was completely kaputski and the techie from Dell had to replace it twice (i.e. the first replacement was also dodgy) before it was working again.

[SockMonkey]

Hope this helps:

Here are the EA recommended requirements:
Supported video cards:

ATI Radeon(TM) series (8500 or better)
8500, All-In-Wonder 8500
9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800
X300, X600, x700, X800, x850

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
-------------------
* 1000 MHz processor
* 256 MB RAM
* Windows(R) XP, Windows ME, Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Operating System.
* At least 1.5 GB of additional hard drive space (5.0 GB total is required if installing both The Sims 2 and The Sims 2 Nightlife at the same time.)
* A T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM.

Obviously you attempted this when you built your computer.  After you thoroughly check out your video card status, check and/or adjust your virtual memory settings.  I mentioned this to JenWarrem on another similar post - it's worth a try anyway.

Also go to AVGfree.com and download their free (not trial) version of the anti-virus scanner.  They like to confuse the issue on the home page with all the advert noise.  That's what I did when my McAfee expired and it has done a good job.  The actual link is  http://www.avgfree.com/doc/289/lng/us/tpl/tpl01

Anyway, just some thoughts.

[FinkTheFuzzy]

Thanks for the suggestions you all. Shortly after posting, my computer crashed again...and again. I haven't really used it since. Before I put it in a corner, I did most of what was mentioned here. It's a bit much to explain it all here...but I eventually came around to checking my motherboard temp. Apparently it was overheating, so I turned up the fan on the heatsink. Once I did that, Sims 2 (minus OFB) stopped crashing and I didn't experience a restart...except for when I ran McAfee and Spybot scans.

I'm certain you're not supposed to run 'em together...but I didn't think that'd cause the system to restart. Problem with scanning the system was that it'd restart before the scan could finish. Same deal this time around, even though the Sims ran fine. Guess I'm hopin' that, once I hook it back up, I'll find that particular restart was due to only to simultaneous scanning by two seperate programs.

Anyhow, after that restart, I unhooked everything, bought myself some canned air, and got to dustin'. Geez...I made sure to meet the requirements for TS2 to a "T" but that isn't gonna save it from user error. All that dust building up in its little fans...I'll start it up once again this weekend and see how things go. If things still aren't working, I'm gonna resign myself to the fact that I can't fix this, and leave it to more able hands.

[SockMonkey]

Apparently it was overheating, so I turned up the fan on the heatsink...
...Anyhow, after that restart, I unhooked everything, bought myself some canned air, and got to dustin'

Oh Man, sorry about the dust clogs.  I totally forgot what a problem those can be and I just finished doing the same thing to someone else's computer.

About the restarts and the McAfee:  Do you have it set to automatically download the updates? - because that may be allowing it to auto reboot the system for you.  On my system I have the tasks set to perform at different times and I set them to notify me only when updates are available, then I install and reboot when I am ready to do so.

Hope you get it to cooperate with you soon - <groan>I hate computer problems.  Good Luck.

[JaneSims]

One other thing to check is your ram. I had a ram stick go bad. It started out that the system would just turn itself off once every couple of weeks, then it got to be a few times a week. Then it became several times a day :/

I got new ram & since then I;ve never had a random shut down.

Jane

[RainbowTigress]

I had the same thing happen to me recently.  I was getting random errors trying to install programs and doing various things, and random BSODs.  By default, Windows XP will automatically reboot on these BSODs, so you may never see them.  But if you really want to have a clue what is going on, you can disable this so that you get the blue screen with an error message instead of it automatically rebooting.  While sometimes the messages can be cryptic, they often give an error message which will give you something to go on, and I wrote down the error and entered it on Google.  But the error I was getting meant it was a hardware conflict of some kind, and it could be almost anything.  They mentioned things like bad RAM and hard drives going out, but it usually involves a lot of trial-and-error.  And if you don't know how to reproduce the situation, you won't know if the problem is solved for a while. 

So anyway, I could not figure out what was going on until my bro-in-law suggested removing one of my sticks of RAM.  I really didn't want to do this because I had recently added a 512 MB stick to double my RAM, but I eventually did it.  At first, I removed the newer stick because he said to think about any recent changes I'd made to the PC and when the problem started.  It seemed my problem started soon after I installed the new RAM, but after removing it, I was still getting random errors.  My brother in law had suggested loading the drivers from the CD that came with the motherboard, so I tried that.  But when the machine rebooted, Windows wouldn't even load.  I tried safe mode, and I tried using System Restore, but it kept locking up on me.  I was just sick of the whole situation and went to eat dinner.  The idea then occurred to me that maybe it wasn't the NEW stick, but the OLD one!  I felt a bit better about that since it wasn't the one I just paid $40 for, so I gave it a shot.  I pulled the old ram out and put the new one in its place, and voila, Windows loaded right up without a complaint!  I was so relieved!  Now I have to replace that stick because even though I've not had the blue screens and other errors, my system runs slow when I have several programs open which I use to do my work.  But at least I know what the problem was now.

[DrBeast]

Heh...talk about getting a new RAM in the nick of time!

[J. M. Pescado]

The idea then occurred to me that maybe it wasn't the NEW stick, but the OLD one!  I felt a bit better about that since it wasn't the one I just paid $40 for, so I gave it a shot.  I pulled the old ram out and put the new one in its place, and voila, Windows loaded right up without a complaint!  I was so relieved!  Now I have to replace that stick because even though I've not had the blue screens and other errors, my system runs slow when I have several programs open which I use to do my work.  But at least I know what the problem was now.

While it's possible your old stick may have gone bad, it could also be a RAM timing issue.

See this thread here.

[RainbowTigress]

Thanks for the link.  I'll have to do some reading on this.  But I'm thinking it still may be a bad stick since I still had trouble when I took out the first stick and still had trouble with just the other one by itself.  That's what lead me to believe it wasn't a RAM issue after all at first.  Interestingly, when I removed the first stick, my graphics went all screwy.  It took me down to 640x480 at 4 bit color!  I couldn't change it, but I got it fixed after rebooting a few times and messing with the drivers.  But I know the graphics ran at higher settings before on 512 MB, so I didn't know what was causing that.  I looked up the specs for the RAM I just bought, and it's CL2.5.  I am not sure what the older one is, or how to adjust it.  I did show it to my bro-in-law, though, who built the PC, and he said it would be compatible with what was already in there.  It ran fine for a while before the problems started showing up.