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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 1st Mar 2019 at 8:42 PM Last edited by Woodmongoose : 8th Mar 2019 at 7:20 PM. Reason: added tried methods

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Community Lots Crashing
Since downloading The Sims 2 UC in 2014 I have had one huge problem with the game. The community lots are very unstable and seem to crash often while I have never had a crash on a residential lot — even if the lot in question is a huge apartment complex or a dorm and the community lot is a tiny bakery owned by my family. I have been thinking if it could have something to do with service NPC:s/employees and their code executing poorly. This is because if I make a small and empty community lot it loads correctly every time.

What makes the problem more bizarre is how community lots function properly until I start adding sub neighborhoods into the game. For example in my brand new 'hood the community lots loaded just as they should but as soon as I sent some teenagers to the uni, the crashing came back. I repeated the actions with another new 'hood. At first community lots worked but after putting in a sub 'hood the game just imploded.

Some background on my system and the things I have tried thus far:

I have a modern gaming PC with i7-6700K processor and GTX 1070 GPU with 16GB of RAM. I play mainly at my native resolution of 2560x1440 even though I have also tried lowering the resolution to 720p and setting graphics fidelity down before entering community lots, which didn't help.

What I have tried:
- 4GB Patch
- Graphics Rule Maker
- Empty Standby List -program
- Increasing virtual memory
- Lowering resolution and quality
- Deleting caches and thumbnails
- Hood Checker
Edit since original post:
-Removing CC (resolved the severe crashing but lag and other strangeness persisted!)
-Letting the game generate a fresh TS2 folder, did not help


What I haven't tried yet:
-Reinstalling the whole game; because it rarely actually fixes anything (although I'm pretty much ready to do anything at this point)
-Limiting the usable cores on my processor; has anyone had any actual luck with that?

I will attach my latest crash report and my config log here if someone is interested. Thank you for reading and possibly offering some kind advice to a heartbroken simmer.
Attached files:
File Type: txt  Sims2Exception 2019.03.01 21.52.05.txt (14.3 KB, 20 downloads)
File Type: txt  CHECKMATE-config-log.txt (10.2 KB, 13 downloads)
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Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 1st Mar 2019 at 11:28 PM
The first step when your game starts to crash is to make a backup and remove your cc and while those things above are all good to do, 9 times out of 10 crashing is caused by cc.

So the error log. All I can tell is it has an Access Violation. The program is trying to read or write something, somewhere it shouldn't/can't. But you know the drill, remove your cc then let's see if it crashes. Could be some CC that you only use on community lots.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Forum Resident
#3 Old 1st Mar 2019 at 11:55 PM
Idk if this helps but if you play on windows 10 you can right click on the game icon, and then go down to properties, you can find something called combility and changed it from windows 10 to windows 7.
This will help your game run smoother.
Now idk if it will help with the community lots. I remember my game doing the exact same - but on all lots about 3x3
At my place it helped changing it to windows 7 but I’m not sure if it will help for you.

Or it might just be cc as joandsarah77 suggests

I build small houses *^*
Test Subject
Original Poster
#4 Old 4th Mar 2019 at 5:00 PM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
The first step when your game starts to crash is to make a backup and remove your cc and while those things above are all good to do, 9 times out of 10 crashing is caused by cc.

So the error log. All I can tell is it has an Access Violation. The program is trying to read or write something, somewhere it shouldn't/can't. But you know the drill, remove your cc then let's see if it crashes. Could be some CC that you only use on community lots.


Thanks, I did some testing and perhaps managed to pinpoint the issue to some high-poly towniefied hairs. Removing them seemed to at least make the crashes less frequent. I still can't run bigger community lots with multiple NPC:s so the issue is not completely wiped out but I managed to get the game back up and running. I don't have any CC buy mode objects in my game (if the Sim Blender object doesn't count) and I've reduced my downloads folder to about 200MB of CC, which is quite the accomplishment from my hoarder self!
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 4th Mar 2019 at 5:02 PM
Quote: Originally posted by OnayaW
Idk if this helps but if you play on windows 10 you can right click on the game icon, and then go down to properties, you can find something called combility and changed it from windows 10 to windows 7.
This will help your game run smoother.
Now idk if it will help with the community lots. I remember my game doing the exact same - but on all lots about 3x3
At my place it helped changing it to windows 7 but I’m not sure if it will help for you.

Or it might just be cc as joandsarah77 suggests


Yeah I tried to run compatibility mode and it helped a bit but unfortunately it doesn't play well with the 4GB patch. Thanks for the tip anyway!
Scholar
#6 Old 4th Mar 2019 at 9:18 PM
hm, it should not "play bad", actually so called "4GB patch" is just setting one flag ("allowed to use > than 2GB") in the file header, and nothing else. Playing with different combinations of "run as admin"/"normal user" and compatibilities modes helps sometimes.

Have you installed DirectX 9c ? There's call to DX9 wrapper in the exception file (which nobody really understand, including Microsoft guys )but it means nothing, normally since Windows 7 these calls are proceeded by Direct X 10.... 12 (respectivelly) interface layer, which may (or may not, it's Windows, expect anything but logic) have side effects. And usually DX9 oriented programs just works better with that library installed.

BTW - increasing virtual memory does nothing, aside wasting space on your drive, leave that for the system to decide. Get more real RAM (for at last 8 GB in total). Windows 10 is really wasteful on resources (not including its commercial idiocy and sneaky updates nonsense), even for usual Microsoft bad standards.


favorite quote: "When ElaineNualla is posting..I always read..Nutella. I am sorry" by Rosebine
self-claimed "lower-spec simmer"
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#7 Old 5th Mar 2019 at 1:55 AM
A good computer should handle many Gigs of custom content not just a few MB. I have about 14 gigs or about 53 thousand files.

Check your Logs folder under Documents>EA Games>The Sims 2>Logs. In there is a text file called config-log.txt. Open that up and check that it says Memory:4096MB Free memory:4096MB and that lower down it lists your graphics card.

I had an issue early on with an AMD card and DirectX9 and I had to reinstall DX9.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Alchemist
#8 Old 5th Mar 2019 at 8:45 PM
from my understanding, the repair option at Origin site is still available for the Ultimate Collection. if it is still there, that could be an alternative to re-installing; if all else does not work.

if the problem occurs with all community lots; problem is likely some mod/hack.
if only some; might check if you can edit those lots.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#9 Old 8th Mar 2019 at 7:16 PM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
A good computer should handle many Gigs of custom content not just a few MB. I have about 14 gigs or about 53 thousand files.

Check your Logs folder under Documents>EA Games>The Sims 2>Logs. In there is a text file called config-log.txt. Open that up and check that it says Memory:4096MB Free memory:4096MB and that lower down it lists your graphics card.

I had an issue early on with an AMD card and DirectX9 and I had to reinstall DX9.


Thank you for all your replies. My config log that I attached here earlier says that I have 4GB of RAM correctly recognised (I have a total of 16 but TS2 is a 32 bit programme so 4 it is) and I have made the game recognise my GPU and texture memory as well. I will surely look into the DirectX versions though. DxDiag lists versions 9-12 but I know it can be an iffy territory. On a side note, I have had fewer and fewer crashes lately but the game lags terribly when new sims enter lots or the weather changes or anything "extra" is going on on the screen really. I made a "clean" TS2 folder by renaming the old one and letting the game generate a fresh version with vanilla things only, and the results were very similar. No crashing but lag all over the place.

I'm curious about resolutions, what kind of resolution do you guys play the game on? What about graphics settings? (I have 1440p + max settings currently) My PC should easily handle it being top of the line but being such an old piece of software I might be stretching a bit far. Weirdly I'm not really encountering the whole pink flashing ordeal that other simmers have been through.
Mad Poster
#10 Old 8th Mar 2019 at 8:13 PM
I have my resolution set to match the TV that I use for a monitor - 1920 x 1080. I rarely have the pink flashing. Maybe I haven't dumped enough crap into my Downloads folder yet.
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