Sims 3 has stopped working...

bebebo wrote:Everytime I try to play the game, I get the "Sims 3 has stopped working..."
It started happening about 20 mins into loading the game, but then I applied the DEP thing and now it's just happening randomly.
I'm running on Windows 7 and have applied the Ultimate Fix/Manual Patch to no avail.
When I remove CC/mods I still run into the same issue.

Oddly, I don't think this started happening until I deleted the folder on my desktop that was created when I extracted the .rar files from torrenting. I also ended up having to delete the .rars because it was taking up 25% of my hard drive space.

Does anyone know if theres a fix to this? Or do I have to reinstall?
( Pls don't say I have to reinstall, my data limit is 15gb a month and all my expansions are like.. 2 months worth of data :c )

Good luck for now !

bebebo wrote:I have ~70gigs of free space, so I don't think that's an issue.
I'll try what you said now tho, thanks

edit: I just remembered that since the last time I played, I updated the driver on my graphics card. I don't think it has anything to do with it, but who knows

//EDIT

okay, I did everything you said and it was working fine for a while! up until I tried to make a new sim in CAS.. I tried to use some of the shoes from the base game, but it made the sim turn the color of the shoes, so I tried a diff pair and it kept happening. Finally I tried other pairs and his hair turned into like.. blocky pixels. It was weird. Eventually it stopped responding. Maybe a graphics thing?

. There, please look under "Name/Chip Type" and "Manufacturer" and then post the information on here.   

That graphics card is MUCH better than mine, and you also have more RAM than me. I'm a bit surprised therefore, that you encounter such severe problems...but OK.     With my old graphics card that has 768 MB of memory (lol), and "only" 4 GB of RAM on the computer, I can actually run The Sims 3 with all expansions and all store content fluently at the highest graphics settings.

Please download the thing called "Catalyst Software Suite". and install it. Please take note of the information/description on that download, at that site.   

AMD wrote:Description:

AMD has received feedback that some users are unable to install the Catalyst 14.4 driver on some motherboards with AMD chipsets. We have investigated the issue and have determined that it was caused by the AHCI driver component that was included with the driver package.

We have therefore removed the AHCI driver component from the driver package and will be providing it as a separate download.

If you were affected by this issue, we recommend you download and install this updated version of the driver.

Before installing this driver, please ensure you have uninstalled the previous driver using the Add/Remove programs option in the Control Panel and also deleted the installation folder for the previous driver. This folder can be found at the following locations:

             C:/AMD/support/14-4-win7-win8-win8.1-64-dd-ccc-whql
                                           or
             C:/AMD/support/14-4-win7-win8-win8.1-32-dd-ccc-whql

Package contains the following graphics drivers and dependent/required software for the products specified in the current version's official release notes for the 64 bit version of Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1: 
                          Display Driver ver. 14.10.1006
                          OpenCL(tm) Driver ver. 10.0.1348.5
                          Catalyst Control Center
                          HydraVision

  

bebebo wrote:okay, thank you for your help! I'm going to try your suggestions when I get the chance.
if all else fails, I'll try installing the AHCI driver component from AMD and see what happens.
I'll post my results here

Spoiler:

bebebo wrote:Noo, it's with every sim. I just make the sim really quickly and experiment w/ clothes on it, and that keeps happening.
And yes, I did have CC clothing in the past, but I deleted all of it - I only kept mods, sliders, makeup, hair, eyebrows, etc.. I removed all furniture, clothing, and all of my Sims3Packs. (my sims3packs were like... 3 gigs worth lol)

I have already tried clearing my cache but I will try it again + removing mods/cc again and see what happens!

Do keep me posted !  

bebebo wrote:Okay, so..
I tried renaming it to something else, and it was going great for a while until about 20 min in and it crashed again.

And nope! I'm playing on a desktop.

I really hate to keep coming back here and saying all your suggestions don't work, it makes me feel bad ;-;

The reason I'm just posting a link now (lol), instead of explaining to you step-by-step how to increase "virtual memory", is because I'm too tired.   Anyhow, try the steps described there. If you are on Windows 7, scroll a bit down. The Windows 7 description starts at #6. Also, note that you really need to RE-BOOT the computer after editing the size of the virtual memory.

After the re-boot, re-start the game. And: have you also defragmented your hard-drive too ?

Good luck again !  

bebebo wrote:Well, something was telling me this was a graphics card issue, since I don't have auto updates on my computer, so it doesn't get updated much.. but I DID manually update it about a week before trying to play Sims.

So, I tried to find the AHCI component since AMD said they were offering it as a separate download, but I couldn't find it. (It's probably in the catalyst suite or something somewhere, but I didn't see it)

So what I did was I went to AMD's site and downloaded a driver from like, late 2013 and I was still getting the same issue. After that, I went back and downloaded one from very early in 2013 and now my game is running perfectly fine. Hooray!


Thanks again for all of your help Carlos!! My game used to run at like, 20-30 FPS in town on average and now it's running at about 60-80 on high. Thank you!!

You still might want to bookmark this page and/or keep my suggestions in mind, for future reference, and even for other games too. All the steps with DEP, 4 GB patch and virtual memory are valuable general tips for PC gaming.