Random game crashes.

[Solowren]

As the title of this thread suggests, for the last week or so my game has suffered from random, seemingly inexplicable crashes. Now, I'm not turning to you fine people for a thorough walk-through on how to un-bork my game. All I request are common reasons the Sims 2 crashes. I'll take it upon myself to sort though them.
One thing more, though: I realize the most obvious reason this would be happening would be a hack conflict of some sort. I've HackDiff'd my hacks and found nothing, so I'm accepting the possibility it could be a hack in direct conflict with my game. I request this list of reasons simply to see if something else will work before I start taking CC out.
Also, I've already tried deleting groups.cache. No dice.

[Kyna]

Just off the top of my head:

- Could the crashes be hardware related? 
- A piece of CC known to cause crashes is the "dress as top" mesh over at MTS2.  The mesh was fixed eventually, but by the time it was fixed several other CC creators had used the bad mesh and some of that CC is still out there.

[cwykes]

Nice shiny new Nvidia card by any change?  People report random crashes - stick your graphics card name into search and see what you find if it's a newish Nvidia card.

I usually post about crashes for newbies, so I'd say basic stuff like clean up your PC, check you aren't out of disk space and don't have your available memory soaked up by other programs running in the background.  You need to sort out if the crashes are hardware related, a problem with the game install (rare), problems with your saved 'hoods or with downloads.  Take your whole sims 2 folder out of the way and play with a brand new set of hoods.  If the crashing stops. the problem is somewhere in your files.

Save frequently and make regular backups speak for themselves as obvious steps in your situation.

MTS2 has a help thread that walks you through all this stuff.  Good luck

[moondance]

My game starts crashing randomly whenever I have 2 copies of the same mesh in my downloads.  I don't think I've heard of this happening to anyone else, but it happens to me--maybe because I'm one of the few who only has the base game.  The "crash" is actually a hard lock-up of the entire computer in this case. 

I used to get crashes with an error message followed by a crash to desktop occasionally.  Those turned out to be corrupted sims, but I haven't had one of those crashes since I stopped using custom skins by Navetsea--all of the corrupt sims were using those skins.  Could be coincidence, since I've never heard of anyone else having problems with those skins, but I suspect it might have something to do with the huge size of those skin files combined with the ancientness of my computer and video card. 

In both of the above examples, the crashes seemed random, but were actually caused by a sim using one of the files in question--Navetsea skin or duplicated mesh--preparing to do a walkby.  The crashes could be intentionally produced by using Inge's shrub or the Insim summoner to teleport the offending sim(s) to the current lot. 

I started getting random crashes not too long ago after I had upgraded my video drivers (ATI.)  That problem was resolved by switching to another version of the drivers.  These crashes really WERE random, so far as I could tell--they occurred just as often in the middle of the sim-night when I wasn't even moving the camera as they did when the lot was full of awake sims and I was moving the camera around and clicking things constantly. If there was something in particular that triggered the crashes, I never figured it out.  I didn't try too hard though, since the video drivers were the #1 suspect from the beginning.  In general though, that's the first thing I do--try to figure out if what seems random really IS random.

 

[phoenix_risin]

I too have been having a lot of crashes lately.
Mine is definitely related to the darn graphics.

The BSOD says this on mine.

Problem caused by NV4_disp
The device driver got stuck in an infinite loop.
Usually indicates problem with the device or the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly.
 Technical info
*** Stop. 0X000000EA (ox883DA198, 0x89B20920,0xBACDFCBC, Ox00000001)
NV4_disp
beginning dump physical memory
Physical memory dump complete

contact system administrator or tech support.

The card is the NVIDIA GEForce 8600 GT with 256 MB on it
 the system is a AMD dual core 5000 processor,
2 GB memory,
I am running Windows XP with updates

I am unsure what any of that means or how to fix it.  I was getting driver error messages at first and I uninstalled and used the driver sweeper and installed new drivers and  nothing changed except I now get this message. 




 It is my own dumbness for allowing the guy at the shop to talk me into Nvidia and not staying with Radeon like I should have
The system though is still fairly new only had it since 08/07 So I am hoping I can take it back in and get them to make it work. Once they fix it I am giving it to my Son and I am building a new one for me. Not mind you behind these issues but because that was planned from the beginning.

I will not be getting a Nvidia card on the new one though you can believe that.

[secondverse]

Hi all, I don't know if this information is at all helpful.  But I have figured out a way around using my crappy graphics card until I get my updated one.  I am using Nvidia so I know the problems.  I have the basic integrated Geforce 6150 LE.  Anyway, when my game goes to the infamous blue screen of death, I wait out the period which is usually about three minutes and the screen returns.  I think exit whatever house or lot I am playing.  This will allow for another hour of so of playing time before the blue screen befalls my eyes once more.  I then repeat until I just get tired and turn the damn thing off.  Hopefully this is helpful

Dominique

[Solowren]

Thanks for the replies. My Internet's been down since I posted the thread.

Okay, on to the responses...:

I don't believe it's hardware related. I close all of my background tasks before I play, and I have an ATI card. I also haven't changed anything having to do with hardware since the crashes began. My disk space is fine, as is my memory.

And thanks for the idea, cwykes. I'll try taking my hoods out. I suppose it also could be caused by a corrupted piece of CC on a Sim trying to do a walkby. I'll check these things when I get home... eventually...

Thanks again for the help.

[doren]

Hi all, I don't know if this information is at all helpful.  But I have figured out a way around using my crappy graphics card until I get my updated one.  I am using Nvidia so I know the problems.  I have the basic integrated Geforce 6150 LE.  Anyway, when my game goes to the infamous blue screen of death, I wait out the period which is usually about three minutes and the screen returns.  I think exit whatever house or lot I am playing.  This will allow for another hour of so of playing time before the blue screen befalls my eyes once more.  I then repeat until I just get tired and turn the damn thing off.  Hopefully this is helpful

Dominique

It doesn't work with the newer NVidia cards, but with your card you could use an older driver (6.14.0010.7772, dated June 2005) and you don't get the blue screen problem anymore.

[JacquiES]

I have been having random crashes as well, just lately.  The last one happened when a birthday occured and it just got stuck in a sound loop and crashed.  Sometimes it is when I go to save, because I am aware that it happens more often now, I save often.  It sucks because I have to keep replaying parts of my legacy.  I also have an ATI card- 1650 pro w/512mb of memory and 3 gigs of ram.  For me it really seems to be since installing BV, or actually maybe more TSS.