Random desktop crashes

[angelyne]

Blah.  The shoe is now firmly lodged on the other foot..

I've been experiencing random crashes to the desktop.  There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to it.  Once crash was on a Maxis community lot (no custom content) and it occured after I went into the photo booth to take a picture.

The other two crashes were back on my home lot and did not appear to be triggered by anything in particular.

I HATE random problems.  They are so difficult to troubleshoot.  I checked the logs carefully, especially the exception log,  and couldn't see anything helpful.

Is there a way to get a more helpful log ?  I've heard people mention error reporting often, but I've never enabled it. Not sure how to do it either.  Would it help? In any case, I'm not too keen on starting to re-install, remove custom content and all that jazz.  I'd prefer a more targeted approach, possible if the game would give me a clue more nuanced than being rudely dumped to the desktop.

The only major thing that has changed in my game was that I re-categorized my hair to be in the problem bin.  Not sure if doing something incorrectly there could cause the game to crash.

[twojeffs]

If one of the hair files got corrupted, it could be causing the crashes. I'd try removing them from downloads temporarily and seeing if that fixes it before doing anything more drastic.

[angelyne]

We think alike 2Jeffs, I've already done that.  We shall see.  I hope it's that simple.

[angelyne]

Actually it turned out to be more simple than a corrupt hair file and at the same time more mysterious.

I tried a couple of different things, but I'm fairly certain that the problem was solved by erasing the groups.cache file located in the My Documents\Ea Games\The Sims 2.

So a rule to remember :  If you are experiencing random crashes, try erasing the groups.cache file.

[bluecatvon]

i keep getting random crashes too! so i'm really grateful with your tip. what is the groups.cache file for?

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think it's like a temporary save of your game data, if you delete it then reload, and check the size of the original, then the size of the newly generated on, there's quite a difference!  and if the file has been running for ages, there's probably some corrupt data lurking there which causes errors like crashing!

[bluecatvon]

by the way, my bodyshop crashed like 8 or 9 times yesterday while i was making some new sims. and usually when i start the game, the game will crash on the loading screen, the one after the opening movie and before the main menu. really hope deleting the groups.cache will hope...fingers crossed!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Do you mean it's crashing while you're still actually waiting for the game to load?

[Jorenne]

I have to delete my groups.cache everytime I close the game down or it won't get beyond the splash screen when I next try to start it up again.  And I still get random crashes and lockups. I have given up trying to troubleshoot and just save often and deal with it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Does sound like something's wrong, though! 

[Jorenne]

Yeah my game has weirdness all over, like sims suddenly losing contacts (they wer ein love dammit!) but not memories, and many other random and strange things.  I suspect something or other is conflicting in my 6GB of CC, so I am left deciding if I try and live with the weirdness and crashing, or actually sort through something like 30,000 files to find out what's causing the problem, and right now I am too lazy to sort through lol.

[MokeyHokey]

Holy flurkin shnit.  And here I was thinking that I urgently need to prune my 1.8 GB, 10000 files.  It would drive me insane to have that much stuff to sort through! Good luck to you, whatever you decide to do with all that. (I recommend the delete key.. )

[Gwill]

I suspect something or other is conflicting in my 6GB of CC.

   Allow me to kiss you!  You're the first person I've heard admitting to having more downloads than me!
I just managed to prune my downloads down below 3GB.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I've a fair amount of downloads, so what I've done is create two versions of the game, Sims2 Play and Sims2 Historical.  Now, at present I'm mainly collecting together all the victorian stuff I have as well as downloading any I find, and I'm playing Veronaville and trying to get everything looking victorian - ish!  It means that I can at least attempt to keep my main downloads folder to a reasonable size - while it's loading, I switch to PC no.2  and play a game of Spider - if it hasn't finished loading by the time I finish  the game, then it's time to do something drastic!

With 6GB of Downloads, Jorenne, I'd say that's your problem in itself!

[Jorenne]

I keep meaning to, but then I worry about deleting something I'm using in a house and messing it up or something.  Any consensus on what actually is the best way to prune downloads?

(although I KNOW I'll only see it as space for more new stuff    I seriously think I have a problem)

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, what I did, basically, was to move certain folders (I file them according to site) which I knew were mainly historical, such as Cindy's Sims, and were mostly recolours, so it wasn't too much of a problem.  Then, if some items failed to appear, I checked in case they needed a mesh, and just copied that across too.

I don't think new meshes being moved out will create a real problem, although you can end up with some objects that look like the original default, but still show the name of the meshed object.  I just replace those when I come across them.

Once I'd moved the obvious folders, I ran searches for stuff with Vic/Vict/Victorian in the filename, and moved those sets and single objects that I found.   

I basically did the same with walls and floors, and with clothing I just moved all the AllAboutStyle victorian clothes - if I had any sims wearing them, they'll just have to wear something else!  The worst part with clothing is finding the mesh, I'm pretty sure I still have to find some of the meshes but I can solve that one easily enough since I have a back-up of all my downloads, and all the victorian stuff from AAS is in its own folder.

It's a slow process, I just do a bit more sorting each time I close the game.

Don't see it as a space for new stuff - Make yet another set of game files and put your new downloads into that!

[angelyne]

I keep meaning to, but then I worry about deleting something I'm using in a house and messing it up or something.  Any consensus on what actually is the best way to prune downloads?

(although I KNOW I'll only see it as space for more new stuff    I seriously think I have a problem)

You could remove all your custom content and it wouldn't cause any problems.  All your sims with custom hair would be bald (or have half their head missing) which is easily fixed by changing appearance.  You might also get weirdness with clothing, which can also be fixed with getting new clothes. Wall paints, floors and objects will be replaced with maxis stuff (leading to some serious re-decorating).  Terrain paints will flash blue.  That's more troublesome as it's not really possible to fix.  You can't remove terrain paint, insofar as I know.

Anyway, make a backup of your neighbourhood and try it.  It if fries your game, which I doubt, you can always put your CC back, and restore the backup. 

But I am definitively getting more crashes, since when I started playing with the base game and uni, I never use to get a crash EVER.  The difference between then and now is meshes (and NL).  So I'm thinking that might be it. (the meshes) I am going to start deleting the cache file everytime time I load the game I think.

PS. Hope it solved your problem BlueCat.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Maybe you have a duplicate mesh causing the problem.  That's the trouble when some sites do a recolour and include the mesh in the file - handy if you don't have it already, but sometimes if you're installing a lot of stuff, you forget to check!  It's one of the reasons I won't use anything like SimsFileMaid to install my files, some of those kind of programs just install twice and add "copy" to the addition.

[Renatus]

The flashing blue texture of missing terrain paint can be removed by ctrl-click and drag with the terrain tool, but you'll never be able to package the lot if you remove the terrain from your downloads folder (and don't put it back). It may be okay if you put the terrain back, I'm not sure. If you're not interested in packaging the lot, it doesn't matter a whole lot, as the lot can still be put in the bin.

[BlueSoup]

It may be okay if you put the terrain back, I'm not sure.

Even if you put the terrain back, it will still be corrupt and unpackageable.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I built two houses, both of which play perfectly well with the current family installed, so I packaged them and installed them with Clean Installer to my Vanilla game.  Both houses crashed as soon as I tried to enter them, whereas other houses from the same neighbourhood were fine.  I can only attribute it to having opened the darn terrain paint menu while I was building them, even though I didn't actually use any terrain paints on either lot!

I have every intention of removing every house with custom terrain paints out of my game and rebuilding them so I can eventually just delete the whole terrain paints folder!  And people are still offering houses for download which are riddled with the stuff!

[angelyne]

DAMNIT!!!!!!!! I was buidling a house and it was getting close to what I wanted and WHAM.  Sims crashed.  This is getting beyond annoying. 

Exception time: 01/21/2006, at 10:39:52.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 1300 (0x00000514).

Is it trying to access a locked file?  Is there anyway I can get a more precise error log, so that I know what it's trying to access when it's crashing.

And while I'm at it, does anyone know what that error is :

 ERROR TSAudio: Duplicate resource instance id found ffed5453 with existing 2026960b:2c3e53d9:ffed5453
.\source\TSAudioResourceManager.cpp(1073).  It seems to exist even in a vanilla game, and I've heard other people complain about it, so it's not just me.  It spams my error log big time.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I get loads of those audio errors, but I notice quite often when sims are sitting at the dining table they appear to be talking, but they are inaudible.  I never got any such errors before NL, so I feel pretty certain that the majority are connected to some kind of fault in the new dialogue interactions.  If so, they really shouldn't be appearing in build mode.

As to the Exception error, I haven't a clue!

[bluecatvon]

haven't got the chance to play the game lately, angelyne if i still have the problem i'll report here

my downloads folder is a mere 400mb something. and i don't have copies of meshes. actually, my game has been crashing since i first fired up the game. a clean game it was, no downloads whatsoever.

and yes ZZ, it crashes when the game itself is loading. it's annoying, but it's bearable. what's not bearable is when i've been playing for hours and forgot to save, then the game crashes. i have only myself to blame

the bodyshop thingy was sorta strange. never had any crashes before. maybe the custom objects are to blame this time many times it's when i try to change the length of the sim's eyes..now i avoid even hovering my mouse near that bloody option

i will certainly do what you guys recommend. i'll delete the groups.cache everytime i play the game. or maybe just clicking to make it a read-only file will help?

[angelyne]

maybe just clicking to make it a read-only file will help?

I don't think this is a good idea, since the game updates this file on a continous basis.