Error codes 12 and 13 along with crashing.

[VJay]

I've been having the same problem as Nimrod for awhile as well. I have my first Sunset Valley that I cannot play anymore; the saves there are ridiculously long, around 10 minutes or more. I had Aging and Story Progression turned off, don't know if that has something to do with the bug but I prefer to mention it anyway, we never know... Then I've started a new Sunset Valley with story progression and aging turned on; so far, it's going well. I've even played the second sunset valley longer than the first and still no long saves and no error code 12. I do hope it will stay that way! *fingers crossed*
As for the mods, I only have Awesomemod and Czezechael's one for same energy gain for all beds.

[Hardin]

I'm getting the same problem as the op. The error codes and the crashing. I also have the almost exact same setup as him except my gtx 260 is the older 196 version and I have vista 64-bit. The game seems to get worse as the neighborhood gets older, because I don't have the problems for the first few hours of a new save.

[bartleby]

Yesterday I had no saving errors. I have aging on and story progression off, so my sims are dying and new sims are only born if I say so. I'm trying to keep it balanced although I don't like the premade sims and tend to kill groups of them once in a while (when I'm bored). So I have less population than I had before.

That file size thing does not make sense to me… unless you have story progression off and aging off, the town is always the same size or smaller… yes, sims are born, but sims also die. Yes, new houses are built, but there's a limited number of lots to build…

Unless genealogical trees are as heavy as memories were in TS2… is it possible?

Also I've been thinking if saving all sorts of patterns and customized objects doesn't slow the game or creates other issues… I'm not doing it, I don't find it necessary, but can't help thinking about it because of the amazing quantity of stuff with no interest for download in the official site. Someone makes blue a pattern that originally was yellow and that's it - saves and shares it right away.

[Hardin]

I have an update it seems that it's only Sunset Valley that is giving me the problems. I'm not sure why but my Riverview save isn't getting any errors at least not yet.

[chaos]

It's a smaller neighborhood than Sunset Valley is. I've read in other threads, and at other forums, that the size of your neighborhood affects the ability to save properly. It appears that size really does matter.

[VJay]

My fingers crossed didn't do anything... I had the error 12 last night in Riverview, I had to quit without saving. If it has something to do with the size, then that is one big bug. I wonder if I'll ever play my next generations... Looks like we're facing a sort of BFBVFS in TS3. hurray...

[Heilena]

I was also getting the error 13 while trying to save, which I find odd.  It didn't seem to matter how often I saved because its occured within 10 minutes of a prior save.  This is frustrating because in my case, no matter what I do I can't get the game to recognize these corrupt files and as luck would have it, when resorting to a backup the game doesn't always progress in the same matter.   

I don't profess to be a computer anything except user.  But what I did and it seems to have eliminated the problem, is now I pause the game before saving as opposed to saving while the game is progressing.  I haven't encountered the error since making this change.

[diana]

I've been getting error code 12 for about 3 weeks. It started in Sunset Valley and was happening about every 5 saves, so I abandoned that neighborhood and started a new Sunset Valley which is about a week old and now every other attempt to save I'm getting error code 12. I've searched all over looking for an answer to this problem and can't find one. I wonder if anyone here has any idea's on why this is happening or if there is a fix or work around for this. I tried what someone suggested in a post saying go to an empty lot, do some activity in build/buy then try to save after, but unfortunately that didn't work for me.

[Simsample]

I've been trying to help out people other forums with this issue, and it would be interesting to gather some more information and try a few basic things.
First thing would be to backup and then check your hard drive for errors, and fix any errors that are found.
One person with this error was running a RAID configuration (not sure which configuration though) so it would be interesting to see if this is significant. Also the OS may be relevant- I'm wondering if the game is failing to write because of permissions? Is anyone having this problem under XP?
Does it make a difference if the game is paused to save as reported by Heilena, and does it make a difference if the save game is saved as a new file as opposed to being overwritten?
Also, it would be good to check whether other programs are affecting the game saving- antivirus or firewall programs for example. Perhaps there could be a program that is seeing the savefile writing as malicious, and is blocking it? I would test with all nonessential tasks shut down if possible, and also test with a 'clean' game- does this occur with no mods/ custom content? The people I've encountered with this issue are all running with the framework and mods.
Another thing that occurred to me would be if there are any significant errors reported in the event viewer.

[tizerist]

I was also getting the error 13 while trying to save, which I find odd.

Did you change any graphical settings beforehand?

[cactus]

I just started to get this code 12 error. I have no hacks/mods intstalled in my game,  only the update, and I tried to save my game even less then every 5 minutes, and I still got the error, so it realy is not a memory issue. My computer specs are all higher than required, so I guess not a problem too. I wrote to customer support, so if I get any info, I`ll let you all know.

[Cedia]

I started having these problems intermittedly a few days ago, and then they started ramping up.  I also noticed that I'd get weird texturing on some sims - Vita Alto's face was the same color as her hair.  I'm playing in Sunset Valley, but I have imported all the single male households along with their houses from Riverview into it (I know, tease all you want - I want choices for my main sim).  Anyway, I've also got some of the purchasable clothing and a furniture set.

This morning I tried dragging all the .package files from both the Downloads and Library folders onto Mr. Pescado's s3rc.exe file, and I haven't had that error since.  Perhaps it his just the placebo effect, I'll keep let you know if that error comes up again.  I'm not running Vista 64, I am running Vista Home Premium 32.

[greenwillow]

I have wondows home premium 64 bit and I am having crashing problems to desktop too.
I updated my drivers and tried a bunch of other stuff like turning off virus protection, doing disk defrag, etc..

[cactus]

I still didn`t get response from customer support.

I am starting to hate this game. I updated my drivers, used CCleaner, defragment, I always delete .cache files, I have Window XP, so I realy have no idea what to do now. I even reinstalled the game and ran it without the update, and I still get the Error Code 12.

[tizerist]

I got a couple of error 12's today. My save file 1s 62.5 mb.

[cactus]

I`ve got answer from customer support. It realy does not make any sense to me. Won`t I loose ALL my progress including all changes I made in neighborhood if I do this??

"Hi Lili,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts ,

I do apologize for the inconvenience it may have caused. I understand that you are having trouble saving your game proress due to this error message. I may suggest you to try the following troubleshooting process to correct this issue.

- Quit the game, if running and completely exit from the Sims 3 Launcher.
- Open 'My Documents'. If you're using Windows Vista please refer to 'Documents' folder instead.
- Double-click 'Electronic Arts' folder.
- Double-click 'The Sims 3' folder.
- Right-click on the 'Saves' folder and choose 'Delete' from the pop-up menu.
- Click 'Yes' when asked to confirm delete..
- Now start the game and try to save your progress. You should now be able to save in the game.

I hope above instructions helps! Please let me know if you are still experiencing difficulty while saving your game progress.
Delete my saves folder?

[J. M. Pescado]

That is an incredibly useless answer, since doing so would destroy all of your saved games, leaving you with no progress to actually save.

[nanacake]

Yeah don't listen to EA support they are a big company who could care less about their players outsourced to hell probably. It's very upsetting this wasn't addressed in the patch because this time it's more than a problem for just the people who put 20 + tables with moveobjects floating over each other on their lots with 6th generation sims and ghosts, Not even taking into account min requirements for the game (or even worse playing on a shitty laptop) and with custom patterns then why their game is taking 20 minutes to save/errored out. /rant

Yes this crashing on save is annoying. I blame the cc in my case though because it wasn't happening before that. (removed 1 shit clothing pattern not as advertised crash seems to be subdue for now) and EA's shit job of removing player access to create content for this game making cc more likely to be incompatible with the game for a long time. This game unlike TS2 is more barred from modding with a vengeance - I am sure there is some Associate of EA monitoring this site, taking notes, so they can disable the mods here and try to make us PAY for mod tools come 1st EP.

[J. M. Pescado]

If someone with an afflicted save wishes to come to grah and DCC me the file, or FTP it to one of my anonftps, I can take a look. Otherwise I am filing it as "could not reproduce".

[cactus]

Yeah don't listen to EA support they are a big company who could care less about their players outsourced to hell probably. It's very upsetting this wasn't addressed in the patch because this time it's more than a problem for just the people who put 20 +

Yeah, I totaly agree with you. I thought this solution is crap. I`ll write them back and see what answer I get. They needed almost a week to answer me on my first question   


Moderator edit: stupid orange color and bolding removed

[J. M. Pescado]

Stop writing in colors or I will have to hurt you.

[tizerist]

If someone with an afflicted save wishes to come to grah and DCC me the file, or FTP it to one of my anonftps, I can take a look. Otherwise I am filing it as "could not reproduce".

Yeah I can.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/bwrx5k
It gets error 12 about 1 time in 4.

[Simsample]

Just for information, tizerist, I dropped your save into my game and managed to play it in several different families and save nine times with no error. I've been playing vanilla (except for some store stuff) and have yet to encounter the error 12 in my game at all.

[burlesque]

Yesterday I got this problem as well. I lost a lot of progression.
I'll post my solution to the ERROR 12.
First, go to your Saves Folder & delete the one that has ".BAD" for example, my save file is "Phantomhive.sims3" so you have to delete this one "Phantomhive.bad.sims3"
Then I used CCleaner to fix my registry & it found problems with some TS3 files, they got fixed.

I don't know if this helped but I upgraded my video card driver too.

Anyway after that I have no longer the ERROR 12 at least for now.

[tizerist]

Just for information, tizerist, I dropped your save into my game and managed to play it in several different families and save nine times with no error. I've been playing vanilla (except for some store stuff) and have yet to encounter the error 12 in my game at all.

Same here. I can't reproduce it today, which is a good thing I guess