The game loses connection with packs

[Darens-Stuff]

Around 10 minutes into playing my save, the game becomes all weird; it's almost as if the game loses connection with certain expansion & stuff packs and won't show their content. The game will go on but the buildings won't load, the sims will idle or act all weird and random, I won't be able to save the game, etc.

No it's not about my custom content or the game patch (it's 1.67 right now and I had this problem in 1.69 as well, and 1.67 actually helped me fix a lot of other issues from 1.69). I think something goes wrong at some point of the game, but I can't figure out what it is.

I attached some pics:

[puzzlezaddict]

@Darens-Stuff  How did you go from 1.69 to 1.67, as in, what procedure did you use?  And what kind of 1.67 install is this now: disc, Steam, or something else?

What world(s) are you playing in, and does the same thing happen in Sunset Valley?  It's possible the problem is the world itself or some of its assets rather than your game.

[Darens-Stuff]

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@puzzlezaddict wrote:

@Darens-Stuff  How did you go from 1.69 to 1.67, as in, what procedure did you use?  And what kind of 1.67 install is this now: disc, Steam, or something else?

What world(s) are you playing in, and does the same thing happen in Sunset Valley?  It's possible the problem is the world itself or some of its assets rather than your game.

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I fully uninstalled 1.69 by following the guides to fully remove the game, and reinstalled the 1.67 from Steam.

I am playing in Alpine County, and never witnessed such a thing in another world so despite it being a well known and well built world, what you say about its assets kind of makes sense.

I got to get over this problem by resetting the town and saving again (I always "Save As"), but after playing about half an hour I decided to save again and the game just got stuck saving.

[puzzlezaddict]

@Darens-Stuff  Check how much RAM the save is using.  If you're close to the ~3.7 GB limit, the spike from trying to save could cause a crash, or a freeze.  You can switch to windowed mode and open the Task Manager to see.

Alpine County is well-made but large and complicated enough that it's difficult to play for any length of time without running into the RAM limit.  It's unfortunate but unavoidable, unless you want to constantly manage the save's memory use.  These tips can help, although they'll only go so far:

https://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE

It might be better though to think about packing up your sims and moving them somewhere else.  If you can only play for half an hour before getting a freeze, and this is in fact due to memory use, it's probably not going to get better.

[Darens-Stuff]

I went back to the game today and played for a bit while the game was using about 2.7 GB or RAM - the saving was fine. Later, during a second save while the game is using 2.9 GB, the RAM went down to 2.7 GB, increased to around 3 GB, and got stuck around there. It isn't even near the limit! Why why why why why!!!!!!!!!!! This just proves how a 64 bit update to Windows is necessary.

[puzzlezaddict]

@Darens-Stuff  There are plenty of reasons the game can freeze, not just high memory use.  That's one of the most common causes, and Alpine County makes it more likely, but it sounds like that's not the problem here.  To look for other issues, please run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

[Darens-Stuff]

Here it is:

(Note: My device is not a Macbook Pro, it is a Razer Blade Pro. I've currently been working with dual boot OSes so that Macbook Pro is a leftover from the MacOS setup)

[puzzlezaddict]

@Darens-Stuff  Please try uninstalling and reinstalling the VC++ 2005 runtime, which Sims 3 uses.  Hit Windows key-i, select Apps, scroll down to the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables, click on the 2005 x86 version, and uninstall.  Don't touch any of the other runtimes.  You can download a fresh copy directly from Microsoft:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26347

You only need the x86 version, not the others.  Restart your computer before playing.

If you get more crashes, please try shutting down any Razer software you have running in the background; one component is crashing repeatedly.  Open the Task Manager, look through background processes for anything from Razer, and End Task.  Even if you shut down the wrong process, it should relaunch the next time you reboot.

[Darens-Stuff]

I didn't encounter any problems outside of Alpine County (where the disappearance of content thing happened once again) today, but I will give it a shot. Thank you!

[Darens-Stuff]

The problem happened again today, it is stuck saving again.