Seasons is crashing

[Cons]

Believe it or not we can't get the game installed on my son's computer. It put in S2 but stopped with UNI
saying it had a read error for some lanuguage file, German I think, WTF don't need that when I'm installing in English. So we tried NL and same thing. Gave it up. Not going in on that computer.It installs every other game on that computer so I have no clue there. Guess try it on my husband's computer.

My Granddaughter had a simiilar problem trying to put NL in hers (She just has S2 in there) and it wouldn't install saying it had some kind of audio error. They got the same error on her friends computer so they gave up.

[jsalemi]

Some CD or DVD drives have a problem reading the EA/Maxis disks because of the copy protection.  My laptop is like that -- the solution I've followed is to copy the CD to the hard disk and install from there. I have a 'disk images' folder off the root, and then each disk for the particular EP/SP gets copied to its own directory labeled 'disk1', 'disk2', etc.  It's important to name them that way, or the install program won't be able to find them.

Put the first CD back in the drive so the install can read it to verify its valid, and then start the install from the hard disk.  Fast, and usually gets around the problem.

[Cons]

I've got it in on my husband's. Didn't get play all that long. But it had more free ram in Seasons than it's ever had on mine after an hour of play. Now he has a Nvidia card, but it's an FX5700 128 meg card. WHen I installed it on his, I loaded the gave at varying intervals.
NL, Goth House:
Page File 586meg, Free Memory was 332+ meg
OFB with GL & FFS
761PG FIle    Free memory was 280+ meg
Pets
638PF and 332+ free memory
Seassons
639PF 277 Free memory at laoding Viego in Rosblossomhills
after 30 minutes of play
696PF 346+ Free Memory
After 1 hour of Play
696PF 290 Free Memory
(2 SIm days into it)
692 Page File 272+ free memory

Game Setting under Graphics are greyed out for the shadows I believe. Those have been greyed out before when Glamor Life was loaded, weren't greyed out in Pets and are now greyed out in Seasons.
On my machine they are not greyed out.

Will try and play tonight for a longer period of time.

jsalemi

I thought about that with his CD-ROM, have to ask him which one he was using. The DVD Burner or the
Toshiba CD-ROM. The Tosihiba should be able to read anything, mine always could. Annie has a Toshiba on hers and I have a NEC DVD Burner in mine and my husbands. Maxis's Safedisk 2  can be a bitch for some CD or DVD Roms to read.I don't know if WOW uses Safedisk or securerom copy protection.

It's possible that the Toshibas are too old to read the newer Safedisk correctly though. I didn't put this NEC in until last fall, so I know the Toshiba installed everything through NL.

[Sleepycat]

if I remember correctly, shadows are always greyed out unless you are on a Lot.

[Cons]

Could be, but I'm pretty sure they are greyed out on a lot also. But I'd have to go look. I'm sure I checked the setting in the Goth house before I loaded seasons and then in the Viego house in Roseblossomhills.Which they weren't greyed out with all expansions on that particular machine. Just with Glamor Life and with Seasons.

Now I finally decided to try new drivers on this machine. So bit the bullet and put the latest Nvidia drivers(93.71) in it. It's been playing, hasn't crashed yet, but time will tell. Free Ram is not anywhere near what it is on the other machine and on this one I shut down the AV on his I don't. The most free I've had on this machine at different intervals is 215+ on first load to the neighborhood and then it has dropped to around 158 to 168+/-.

I read the other post on the problem with the ATI drivers. Hmmmm
at this rate everyone will have to use a SIS Unicrome video card.Blah! If the latest catalyist drivers are glitching in Sims2.So much for switching cards.

Maxis needs to get it's driver issues straightened out.

[ZiggyDoodle]

I read the other post on the problem with the ATI drivers. Hmmmm

My ATI's working super.  That last poster is working with a new system.  Sweet graphics card but no mention was made of the OS.  Could Vista be involved?

[Cons]

ZiggyDoodle

She said she had put in the latest ATI drivers or the new system came with them. So could be they aren't happy campers. Which one's ar you using?

I finally changed my Nvidia drivers as I said and I played for 2 1/2 hours tonight. Checked the ram before I quit and it was up to 239 meg open. That's a major improvement.At the 2 1/2 hour time before it was down to 70 meg and would start the audio stammering and crash.

After reading EA's readme on video card issues, that's a known issue with a 6600 card, which I have. (Audio stammering that is). That's why I changed the drivers. The link I gave earlier in this thread was pretty specific about why you get an Access Violation error.Game bug or Drivers. I have shut my graphics down some, no shadow (I don't like them anyway) and I don't display the neighborhood houses(I never did before in Pets either, game seemed lag in rotaing the houses if I had that on) But that's all I have turned off.

So unless this game goes south over the next few days of play, I'm reasonably sure it was  a driver issue with the video card. Surprisingly the 93.71 drivers are working quite well. I chose those because they came out in November and I felt those were the one's Maxis used when they were making the Seasons expansion pack. That being said if I were running a Nvidia card and having graphics issues or weird crashes that gave you the Access Violation in the log file, then I'd switch to that driver and see if I had an improvement.ALso make sure your sound drivers are up to date.My graphics overall are damn good in the game. And yes I can see the fish in the ponds.

Got fingers and toes crossed it's a wrap with this game. But I have seen posts where people have played for a week and then started having crashes left and right. Guess we'll see in time.

Thanking everyone for their input in this thread. Appreciate it.

[Lorelei]

Warning: I am not technical. This is opinion, and I won't be bothered if you choose to ignore it.

That said, if you're stuck with a laptop and it has an NVidia card, none of the NVidia drivers or tweaked drivers out there will work, you'll have to nag your laptop manufacturer instead, and probably have to use IE rather than FF, Opera, or NS/Moz to get it.

Old news to most of you, I'm sure.

When asking for driver/card help, I mentioned I had a laptop, but got advice which would have been great for a desktop, but it did not help me because I was using a different set-up. If you're following all the excellent advice and getting no result, even after checking for User Idiocy Issues, and you have a laptop, then voila, that may be the main problem right there.

Also, EA will use the fact that you are brazen enough to use a laptop in order to refuse you tech support, even if the issue you need help with has nothing to do with your machine type. Too bad I need one for grad school. Lugging a desktop back and forth isn't feasible.

If you do manage to load your game in and up the settings graphics-wise, the game may not immediately barf, and may in fact run like a dream for a while, but eventually you will get a barf-up blue screen. The Unofficial Sims 2 Tech Guide (not updated past OFB) has in-game screenies that will help you decide what level of detail you can or can't live without. Some of the highest settings improve very little past medium settings. Why stress your card if the payoff is so inconsequential?

I CAN run on highest settings for a couple of hours (on a good day) but see no real difference visually lowering most of them. And that usually means longer gameplay time.

[Cons]

Lorelei,

Laptops are different critters. They weren't ever built to play  these type of games. Wasn't their purpose. They do use different video cards in them than in desktops. Laptop processors and Video cards are special because of power issues.Even the HDD are different. If your ordering parts for them they have to be "Laptop" parts.
Everything put in them has to be able to use low power. After all they have to be able to run on batteries more than a few minutes. You buy a laptop because you want to be able to take it with you and use it anywhere. That means places where there are no outlets.

Gaming rigs are special critters, even for Desktops. Not every desktop is created equal either. Many buy
straight off the shelf units expecting them to run any big game out there and find they fall flat on their face.
Many of those have good enough processors, but fall short with the video cards and Power Supplies and amount of ram. Big video cards are power hungry devils. Those running crossfire or SLI most certainly need huge power supplies. Not to mention 3 or 4 Hard Drives,maybe 3 CD/DVD ROM burners, huge processors and large amounts of ram.Super sound cards and the list goes on.
A real gaming rig will set you back mega bucks.Go to Dell or Alienware and check the price of one or go to Newegg and price all the components seperately. Whew!

I just have a beefed up run of the mills desktop. By saying beefed up, it has a decent video card, decent amount of ram, and a decent processor and a fair sized HDD in it and a PSU that should be able to handle everything under a load. When I upgrade I will have to buy a bigger meaner PSU to accomodate the new
power hungry componets. Which will cost me big bucks because elcheapo PSU's aren't worth a flip.


EDIT: Dell has a gaming Notebook. The XPS M1710. Nice pricetag with it and I assume the XPSm2010 is capable of running games also.

[MutantBunny]

For whatever it's worth:

Cons, your problems sound exactly like what I've been having--well on my sons PC. The reset at cold booting, the sound issues, etc. Sound worked fine in headphones, but the desk top speakers wouldn't work at all or there was so much static, it was worthless. I looked and looked for conflicts, reinstalled drivers, went thru the BIOS, etc etc.

I was playing the 'why why why' game for 3 weeks! Happened across a bbs where ONE guy said: EAX and sound blaster hate each other. I don't even know what EAX is. But I had seen it in the hundred driver installs I'd done trying to fix the problem. I run Xp SP1 only with a sound blaster live card.  Creative has recently stopped supporting this card as it's old old. The last driver set they offer bundles with the EAX shit.

That one post directed me to a page with kX drivers. I unistalled everything Creative and installed the kX stuff. Ta da! No resetting, great (for an old card) sound. Everything is fine.

So maybe your problem is similiar? Hope this helps somebody.....

[Cons]

MutantBunny

No won't help me but maybe others. I have AC97 sound. My sound glitch seems to have been caused by the video driver. (Yes that can happen)

However creative sound cards can be another horse. Which reminds me, to ask my son if he's updated his for his audigy. He usually does, but he lost sound in WOW. Possible a WOW patch doesn't like his drivers. He has sound everywhere else.But I'm not going there. He's a pretty good Computer tech in his own right.But right now he's baffled. So as you see not always EA Sim2 causing weird things to happen.

Lorelei

I found that ATI has begin to update drivers for laptops. So you might want to check. Before only the manufacturer of your laptop had any driver updates. Nvidia I don't think has started providing laptop video drivers yet. Or at least I didn't find anything saying they had on the first search.

[Lorelei]

Lorelei,
Laptops are different critters. They weren't ever built to play  these type of games. Wasn't their purpose. They do use different video cards in them than in desktops. Laptop processors and Video cards are special because of power issues.Even the HDD are different. If your ordering parts for them they have to be "Laptop" parts.
Everything put in them has to be able to use low power. After all they have to be able to run on batteries more than a few minutes. You buy a laptop because you want to be able to take it with you and use it anywhere. That means places where there are no outlets.

Absolutely correct. So I consider it a victory that I managed to finally get Sims 2 to run on mine. Took a newer driver, but it finally works (knock wood). All EPs, two SPs, med-high settings, lots of mods/hacks, overly large downloads folder that I'm actively paring down.

[Cons]

Lorelei,

That is a victory. Good work. Sometime though others with laptops may not be as fortunate. Depending on who built the laptop and if they update the drivers for the unit.

As I said above, ATI is starting to put some Laptop Video drivers up for Download.They can always check and see if their Notebook is listed. Those with Nvidia cards aren't going to be so lucky. Those are still left up to the manufacturer of the Notebook.

[Cons]

Here's a site that lets you figure out how big a PSU you need to run everything in your computer.
They're updating the calculator at the moment, but it should be an interesting experience for everyone to put the numbers in.(No not for Notebook users) A PSU that's too small can cause lots of headaches too.

http://www.journeysystems.com/power_supply_calculator.php

[Tyraa Rane]

Lorelei,

Laptops are different critters. They weren't ever built to play  these type of games. Wasn't their purpose. They do use different video cards in them than in desktops. Laptop processors and Video cards are special because of power issues.Even the HDD are different. If your ordering parts for them they have to be "Laptop" parts.
Everything put in them has to be able to use low power. After all they have to be able to run on batteries more than a few minutes. You buy a laptop because you want to be able to take it with you and use it anywhere. That means places where there are no outlets.

But there are "desktop replacement" laptops and laptops built specifically with gaming in mind. Mine is a desktop replacement rig...crap battery life (about 2 hours) and weighs 10 lbs, but it's taken every game I've thrown at it so far.

Theoretically ATI doesn't support driver updates on it, either (Mobility Radeon card)--their detection software kept saying my computer wasn't compatible. I went with a late '06 set of drivers I dug out of the depths of Google instead of the '07 set ATI had posted...they work great. And no, I don't get support from EA either, since I'm running the game on an "unsupported" system...but why would I want help from them anyway? They'd just tell me to delete my custom content and reinstall. 

It's entirely possible to get TS2 running--well--on a laptop if you're willing to shell out the money. And stay away from Nvidia.

[J. M. Pescado]

But there are "desktop replacement" laptops and laptops built specifically with gaming in mind. Mine is a desktop replacement rig...crap battery life (about 2 hours) and weighs 10 lbs, but it's taken every game I've thrown at it so far.

You call 2 hours of battery life crap? 2 hours of battery life is godlike. Mine has an impressive battery life of one half of ten minutes. On the other hand, it *DOES* rule over other lappies with its 42-pound, allegedly portable fist.

[prattle]

MutantBunny

No won't help me but maybe others. I have AC97 sound. My sound glitch seems to have been caused by the video driver. (Yes that can happen)

However creative sound cards can be another horse. Which reminds me, to ask my son if he's updated his for his audigy. He usually does, but he lost sound in WOW. Possible a WOW patch doesn't like his drivers. He has sound everywhere else.But I'm not going there. He's a pretty good Computer tech in his own right.But right now he's baffled. So as you see not always EA Sim2 causing weird things to happen.

I am not awesome in technical matters, but I am a WoW player and I might be able to help with some son bribery here.
Has he tried messing with the "sound channels" slider under Audio Options? It was added recently, and it's been set wrong by default for quite a few people who have had to pull it towards the left side to get their sound working right again.
http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww01656p1
If all else fails, Blizzard's tech support is generally more useful than EAs and actually makes an effort to fix stuff. 

[Cons]

prattle

I emailed that right to him. Hope that's it. Thank you


However on another note, I'm right back to the drawing board with Sims2. It started crashing again, frequently. I even tried the boolprop shaders false at the neighborhood screen and that doesn't help either.
Damn game.  Got to be the 6600 card and the Nvidia drivers Sims2 Season hate each other problem.
Graphics are great in the game thoguh, rotate quite nicely, just crashes frequently. Blah! Think I'll just see how long it lasts on the other machine with the FX5700 card and the old drivers.