[PC]Random Sims 2 Crashes

[TiE23]

Hey, I'm new but I just had to consult some people for help. I have Windows Vista Ultimate 32-Bit and have had troubles with my Sims 2 (+Every full expansion up to Seasons) game. You see, I upgraded to Vista about three months ago and I recently installed Sims 2 just three days ago. The first time I started the game it when to Stop Error while it was booting up. I didn't want to give up so easily so I tried around two more times until the game started properly (though slowly). But the strange thing is that on that first session I was really into it and was able to play for over 6 hours (!) without any problems and it ran fine. Then it crashed.



The crashes happens the same way- game is going like normal and the screen just goes black for half a moment and I get the lovely Blue Screen stop error. 90% of the time it happens at a loading screen. And the rest of the time in-game when doing nothing special, just going along and it stops with no indication.



Now for my specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.40 GHz

1024mb RAM

nVidia EVGA 7600GT 256mb Video card

ASUS A8M2N-LA Motherboard





Game runs fine until it crashes. I'm an experienced user so I have good habits keeping my computers bloat- and malware free. I started to run the game in compatibility mode in both XP SP2 and 2000. XP compatibility made the game run a little smoother and load faster. Right now I'm on that because with Vista my success in even getting to my 'House' was only about 50%- and with XP it was about 75%.



I've updated my Mobo BIOS, graphics drivers, Hard Disk Drivers, Sound Drivers, (according to my computer's manufacturer for Vista) and keep my computer updated. Sims 2 is patched and it has done nothing to help.



Also... Because of Vista my game choice is very limited, I can't play most games that I install, including Company of Heroes- which was developed with Vista capability in mind. But also Vista commonly crashes on me for no good reason. I could just be browsing the internet and the computer will blue screen and force me to perform a hard reboot (pressing the power button). This stuff hasn't really phased me that much, but I'd like it to stop because the first month or two of having Vista I never had these random shut-downs.







Any help would be great! _<' />

[liam12360]

Well, have you been getting the updates? I have vista now and I can run all of my games fine. You could consider me a gamer. This might surprising you but I leave Vista Aero off, AKA "Vista Basic" this is because almost all of my games run a bit slower cuz windows is rendering glass in the background. You could try turning aero off before starting your games. Also, not trying to be mean to anybody, but nVidea is not really the best graphics cards for gaming. For example, if you jack-up the video quality and resolution to push the card to 'the max' (in witch i have a habit of doing) then the SOUND gets effected! You wouldn't believe it! Im playing halo on my nVidea and the sound starts getting buggy! I switch to my ATI and the sound is untouched and the video is smooth like butta' If you have a bit of extra cash, go buy an ati card. If you dont want to, then try it with Aero turned off. Simple as that.

[TiE23]

I'm not trying to get a performance boost, I'm just trying to find a way to prevent the game from always crashing. Also, I check the options in the compatibility screen to turn off Aero when it's running. And I've been using nVidia for the last 7 years and I've never had problems like this. If anything it's clearly Vista's fault, but yes nVidia has apparently had some trouble with their drivers. But I'll go ahead and look for more Vista updates and see if I need to de-frag my computer. I don't think I'm going to buy a new video card to see if it may fix my problem.

[TiE23]

Well anyway, since no one helped I was pretty much on my own. But I've fixed the problem. The reason why it took so long is because I never really realized it was a hardware problem, and not a software problem. As in it wasn't a Vista problem, and looking back on it, I'm surprised I didn't realize it earlier, as the stop error has been a part of Windows since at least Windows 2000.



Well anyway, it the the 000007f stop error which, when looked-up, identified to be a hardware problem, mostly blamed on the RAM and in some cases the motherboard. So I decided to upgrade to 2gb and possibly solve a problem. And lo and behold, no more crashes, the new RAM fixed my problem and all my games run like normal. Even a game like STALKER runs fine on Vista. So now that my only problem is fixed, Vista has completely settled in for me, and I am now happy. Vista is really a great OS, and those who say otherwise either haven't even used it, or just have no idea what they're talking about.



So yeah, future reference: 07f stop error = bad RAM.