Game crashing, fixed it once and now it's crashing again.

[chiho]

So yesterday I was playing and I went to enter Strangetown's CAS and my game crashed. The window popped up that says "The application has crashed. The application will now terminate." I spent the better part of three hours going through the FAQs and guides here, including taking every folder out one by one. It seemed that it was something in my user data but all I wanted to keep was my neighborhoods and downloads. So I copied those folders to my desktop deleted the rest, ran the game forcing it to recreate all user data folders in My Documents, closed the game, put in my neighborhoods and downloads and everything worked fine. I was able to play for about 2 hours last night and about an hour today.
Then today after I'd spent about an hour decorating a house in a different neighborhood, I minimized the window to open Fraps so I could take some pictures. After I entered cameraman mode and took the first picture, the application crashed again.
I lent someone my original Sims 2 discs awhile ago and I won't be able to get them back. So I really don't want to have to reinstall everything as I'd have to buy new discs.
If anyone can help me it'd be greatly appreciated!!

Here are my system specs in case they're needed:

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
System Manufacturer: Dell
System Model: Dell DXP051
Processor: Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB ram

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
Video Card memory: 512mb

Also I have all EPs, and the H&M Stuff Pack.

I don't know what else information you'd need but I could try to get anything else. The video card is new, it's only been in for a week, so I don't know if that's causing it. I played for a few days with it before the crashes started so I don't think it is.

[KellyQ]

I have a new Nvidia 7600 GT and started experiencing crashing shortly after I installed H&M. Like you, I had only had the card about a week so I wasn't sure if it was the card or the game.

I fought with this issue for several weeks until this last weekend when I finally uninstalled H&M and BV. So far *knock wood* my game hasn't crashed since then. Maybe you could uninstall BV and/or H&M and see what happens? I would be interested to see what your results are.

Sorry I don't have anything more helpful then that. Oh, and I am assuming you have updated the drivers for your card and ruled that out.

[chiho]

Yes, I do. I installed them as soon as I had got the card in and working correctly. I'm really not wanting to uninstall BV. I could play without H&M, but I don't want to do BV. I may uninstall H&M if it keeps up and let you know. It only crashed once yesterday. Then it played fine. Nothing seems to be corrupted from the crashes either.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Rule Number One:  Never, ever, even with a machine-gun at your back, lend someone your Sims2 discs!

Having said that, might be worth buying it again as a dvd, makes reinstalling very much faster and less of a bother (that is, when, and if, you ever need to do a complete reinstall.)

[KellyQ]

Well I have to take back what I said in my previous post. My game crashed last night after playing for about 2.5 hours, for no reason that I can figure out. Just black screen, blink blue, black, blink blink blue, black...until I reached down and hit the button. Fucking thing. I am so sick of this.

[ZephyrZodiac]

My sympathies, Kelly!  It's that awful lurch and sinking feeling in the stomach that really gets you, isn't it?  And it never, ever happens when you're thinking, I don't like what's going on here, think I'll just exit without saving?  No, it's always when things are going really well, everything looks good, the weddings on, or the date has reached dream level etc.!

I just wish I knew how to help, but I have problems with my own game that just don't seem to be explainable - it's probably that we tweak and tweak with our mods and our downloads, which most of the time make everything work much better, but just occasionally something goes wrong.     But your issues sound much more computer-related than mine and I really know very little about graphics cards.

[dizzy]

I have a 7600 GT here and very rarely get a crash. I use the same old nVidia driver that came on the CD with my video card, and I never upgrade.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I upgraded recently because neighbourhood view was looking so dreadful, but having read in another thread about turning UI transparency off, I wish I'd done that instead, it seems to have replaced the windows and stopped internal staircases from showing outside the wall.  Maybe I'll put the old driver back!