No longer able to take snapshots in Sims 2 (Storytelling)

I have been running Sims 2 Complete Collection on my Windows 10 laptop happily for several months without any problems. Now, all of a sudden, I am unable to take camera snapshots. I press 'C' on the keyboard (or click on the camera icon), I hear a click and see a flash, but when I open my family album (Story Mode – F4) there is no new photo there. All the old snapshots and associated text are still there though. The problem happens in all neighbourhoods and all households. Upon inspection, the picture does not appear in the Storytelling directory in the My Documents folder either (in the appropriate neighbourhood folder).

I tried testing video capture as well but that no longer works either. I get the error message: "Error recording video capture file. Your movie could not be written to disk. Check to make sure you have enough disk space and correct read/write permissions". I have 736 GB of free space on the hard drive, and the read/write permissions have not been changed. As a further test, I tried running Sims 3 and the camera and video capture is still working fine in that game (which is run from the same hard drive and My Documents folder).

I have not installed any new software recently, nor have I done any updates or made any changes to settings or software on my laptop.

I have stepped through the entire Mod the Sims Problem Resolution process (testing the game without custom content – did not solve the problem, removing my user files – did not solve the problem, deleting cache files – did not solve the problem, and so forth). I have tried everything I could possibly think of and nothing has worked. In desperation I uninstalled the game (including all expansion and stuff packs), then reinstalled after a restart and ensuring all the old stuff had been removed. I was sure that starting with a clean game, freshly installed with no mods or anything at all would fix things. It did not - I still can not take any snapshots. Worse still, all of the albums that come with the pre-installed families (e.g. Pleasant, etc.) are blank (in the appropriate folders in My Documents, the *.xml files are there for some neighbourhoods but no *.jpg's and for other neighbourhoods there isn't even a Storytelling folder). I have no idea what is going on. Could it be a Windows 10 thing that has made something go awry? I have switched off my antivirus (Avast) to see if that fixed the problem but it did not. Very sad and frustrated, I love Sims 2 and have been playing it since it was first released.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had this problem and found the cause, or have any other suggestions for me to try.

System details:
O/S: Windows 10 Home Edition
Processor: Intel Core i7-6700HQ 2.6 GHz
RAM: 16 GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX1070

Thanks.

Hello and welcome to the Forum,

Try downloading/installing DX9, from the link here:
https://goo.gl/DAqp1J

Then test these game features again. Please let us know about your progress - good luck!

Hi,
Thanks for your response. I have DirectX 12 on my system - are you suggesting I try winding that back to Direct X 9?

Also, after hours of trying again last night, I found I wasn't fully disabling my antivirus software. Once I worked out how to shut it down completely, I was able to take snapshots again. The antivirus software has recently had an update and so I suspect that is what is causing the problem. I am running Avast Internet Security (and the latest update, Version 17.6.2310 is the culprit I think).

Anyway, to run Sims 2 I make sure I have disconnected from the Internet, then I fully shut down Avast and then the game seems to work properly again. I haven't got time to fully confirm this but will when I have a chance to play again next weekend. It is a pain to have to run the game this way, but at least I can play again with full functionality.

I might try the DirectX 9 thing as well if you think it could also be causing a problem.

Thanks again.