Seasons is crashing

[ZiggyDoodle]

I guess that's one benefit of dialup: I just shut down my a.v. and firewall before loading TS2.

[Cons]

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.

[Sleepycat]

I got mad and uninstalled my AV yesterday. Between the router, Firefox, Thunderbird, and not being stupid, I'm safer than your average idiot WITH an AV. But even if you don't use IE, you need to keep windows updated with critical updates. You don't need to keep the service running, you just need to remember when it's the 2nd Tuesday of the month and do it by hand. There are 3 zillion holes in Windows that have nothing whatsoever to do with IE or OE.

(I am currently running a 30 day trial of Nod32, but if I'm not happy with that, I WILL run completely without an AV. I'm sick of them sucking up all my resources)

have you tried avast!, the free version works great  http://www.avast.com/
I've been using it for years now.

[KatEnigma]

I think I've tried all the free ones already, and had one problem or other. AVG doesn't play well with Eprompter, which I use to read my mail.  It's text-only, and lets me delete things before they even touch my machine. Since it's also small, I let it run constantly, checking every 5 minutes. And I can't tell AVG to IGNORE it.  It used to lock up my old laptop completely. I figure if Steve Gibson, renowned security expert, can run without an AV, and says you can do so safely as long as you're not stupid, I can too.  I have high speed, but I don't care about turning it off while gaming, even, since I'm behind a router. The problem is that CERTAIN AV's turn themselves back on, even after you've turned them off (I watched McAfee do it!)

[jrd]

Steve Gibson, renowned security expert

Lol.

Gibson is certainly clever, but he has very little understanding of what security risks really are. He's pretty wacko, and unfortunately, so are most of his followers.

Remember the "raw sockets" and UPnP crusades?

Gibson is a very amusing read, but don't take him seriously.

[Cons]

 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.

[J. M. Pescado]

Gibson is certainly clever, but he has very little understanding of what security risks really are. He's pretty wacko, and unfortunately, so are most of his followers.

Remember the "raw sockets" and UPnP crusades?

I remember "Raw Sockets", but I didn't take that particular claim seriously. *I* *LIKE* my raw sockets, thank you very much. Raw sockets, like raw meat, are the proper way for sockets to be, and to hell with those wussies. UPnP, though? Never trusted it. Another open port I don't need. DELETED!

[Cons]

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.

[ZiggyDoodle]

Played last night and checked the free RAM while I was in Uni with two YAs fishing at the park.  Total of 10 Sims on the lot (using the swings, etc.) and it started to rain.  Cacheman reported 986 available RAM.  Much better than some of my earlier stats which left me with only 100MB out of the two gig.

Am wondering if adding more RAM would have any benefits.

[Cons]

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.

[blubug]

Hahaha that reminds me of the time my BF banned me from installing Sims 1 and then Sims 2 (when it first came out) on his computer. So I just installed Bodyshop and downloaded millions of outfits+objects, installed photoshop to make some clothes and skins. He then helped me fix my own computer and add RAM

[Venusy]

I'm running on lower specs than most people (1.1GHz AMD Duron, 512MB RAM, GeForce 5200 FX) and Seasons (as well as Half-Life 2) run fine. Neither have crashed (apart from the random system crashes that seem to plague my system these days, but these occasionally happen even when explorer.exe is the only major application running). Half-Life 2 suffers a couple of seconds worth of freezing and audio stuttering when auto-saving/loading levels, but Seasons runs smoothly now that I've removed a lot of CC.

EDIT: "autor-saving"?

[Cons]

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.

[witch]

I recently tried Avast!. I saw that AVG's free software had changed and become more idiot friendly and less tweakable, so I thought I'd give Avast! a go.

I booted up my PC the next time after I installed it, only to discover it had set the Windoze automatic updates to 'on'. When I went to shut down the PC it told me it was installing update 1 of 5, don't turn it off. 9 hours later, when I got home from work, it still said that. Apparently that is a Microsoft issue, there's a dialogue box hiding behind the shutdown that no-one can see to click.

Anyway, that's not all Avast! did without asking. It turned on a bunch of services I had disabled - you know - all the bloody remote-control stuff MS leaves so they can hijack your PC at will. Plus it turned on other stuff I don't remember right now.* Took me about 15 minutes to go back and turn off all the crap it had turned on without asking. So Avast! lasted less than 24 hours on my PC.

I've been recommended Nod32.

However I don't have a virus checker running constantly, I turn it on once a week for a scan when I do the housekeeping, the backups, defrags and so on. If you don't use IE with a million spyware toolbars and make sure you virus scan downloads & emails, I reckon it's pretty safe. The only virus I ever had was given to me by a techie who didn't virus check at all!

Edit:* Avast! turned on Windoze bloody Security Centre and Firewall too.

[Cons]

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.

[angelyne]

When I intend to play the Sims, I created a cmd file that stops a whole bunch of non-critical services, as well as stops a bunch of exe that I don't need.  Stuff like Mcafee AV (which you CAN stop, but you need to close 3 services, most especially the framework service, otherwise it will restart itself).  I shut down the ipod stuff, and a bunch of others I can't recall at the moment.

Example :

net stop "network associates mcshield"
net stop "network associates task manager"
net stop "McAfee Framework Service"
net stop "ipod service"
net stop "Security Center"
net stop "Wireless Zero Configuration"
net stop "Automatic Updates"
net stop "Computer Browser"

etc....

and to clean up, I shut down a bunch of exe's i don't need.

taskkill /f /IM ituneshelper.exe
taskkill /f /IM updaterUI.exe
taskkill /f /IM shstat.exe

If you have never done this before you only need to create a notepad file and save it with the cmd extension.  You run it like you would any program.

Why not simply just disable the services ?  Because I'm too lazy to restart the service if I want to use whatever functionality it provides.  It also lets you run a sort of "standard" and "lean and mean" type of configuration without too much bother.  Unless you consider clicking on an icon after booting too much bother.

Of course they ARE critical services that you can't shut down.  Best to do a little research on the net to find out what they do, before killing them.  But the good part of shutting down services using a cmd file, is that if you make a mistake and you break something, you simply have to restart your computer and everything will be fine.

[Lana B]

I'm nowhere near Seasons running up to NL on my laptop which has recently decided to start throwing this exception at me when I try and save. It's a recent development. I also grabbed a copy of Life Stories from TPB which gives me the same exception code on loading so I haven't actually played it yet. I would love to know what's causing it. The guys running SETI@home seem to think it's related to having a screensaver and a lot of people playing various different games think it's nVidia related.
I tried a few things including taking out all CC (including my awesome hacks), deleting My Documents\Sims 2 folder, uninstalling and reinstalling the whole game, uninstalling lots of other stuff, cleaning up the registry, defragging both hard drives. I can play but can't save so it gets old pretty quickly and would love to find a solution.
Any suggestions would be welcome.

[Cons]

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.

[Lana B]

Let you know about Nvidia then.

Was this directed at me?
I was only saying what some people think it is as there seems to be no consensus out there. I have an integrated chip, not even a card. The bits I did read had people trying various different nVidia drivers to no avail.
If it is a memory access issue, which makes sense, what can I possibly do to fix it?
I wonder of this is one of the wonderful Windoze security fixes. I used to have them off but now have them on notify and recently let a batch through.

[witch]

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.

I had many disabled services which only Avast! could have turned on. I installed nothing else and all this happened after the install, during the same computing session. I don't like wrestling software for control of my PC! 

I had Security Centre disabled. I didn't try disabling Avast! auto updates, it didn't last long enough on my machine after it touched things without asking.

[Cons]

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.

[ZiggyDoodle]

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.

Same here, minus FFS.  Keeping my DL folder to just under one gig.  All patches in except Pets, which I kicked out.

Am guessing the game will run great on your son's system - because of the card he has.

Not having any problems at all since the DWF error was cleared up; in fact, am enamored with the very lush graphics of Seasons and the incredible detail.  Hope you get to enjoy it soon. 

[Cons]

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.

[ZiggyDoodle]

Your video card is an ATI isn't it?

ATI Radeon X850XT - thanks to Hegelian's recommendations in the upgrading/building a computer sticky.

 (Ziggy hugs Hegelian and gives him a juicy kiss on the cheek)

[Cons]

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.