World Adventures/University - Crash - Loading Town

[shaken_martini]

I recently bought a new gaming notebook (Asus ROG G752) with:
Intel i7
16 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M
Windows 10

I downloaded Sims 3 (patch 1.69) and all my expansion packs (World Adventures, Late Night, Pets, University Life, Seasons and Ambitions).

Then I installed a lot of mods and all was fine for two weeks or so, until I wanted to check out university.
So I went into edit town mode and selected university.
It loaded up, so I saved the game, went back to my town and my family and enrolled them in university.
They get in the taxi, drive to the city limits and then the loading screens comes up.

The progress bar doesn’t move at all and after a few seconds, the game just crashes to my desktop without an error message.
I started up the game again, went to edit town to load university, but it crashed again.

I uninstalled everything, removed the sims3 folder from Documents and re-downloaded the game via origin. Started the game clean, no mods, no saves, but it still crashes when trying to load university or france/egypt/china.

Does anyone have an idea about the cause of this problem?

[roberta591 · Accepted solution]

@shaken_martini First thing I checked is if your video chip is in the TS3 database and it is not there. Here is the how to I used for my GTX 960 - link - add a new video card to Sims 3 If you are a casual Windows user your going to have numerous issues with free space on the system 256Gb ssd. While its ok for advanced users, the casual Windows user should not have to contend with operating system house keeping to play games. Until ssds mature and come down in price there are issues that affect the benefits. I think ASUS is using the Nahimic audio driver. This is a sound effects mixer that adds echo and other affects and is known to crash games. Also check to see if there is a newer video driver.

[roberta591]

@shaken_martini Please post your computer's dxdiag - link how to - how to post dxdiag  thank you

[shaken_martini]

Hi, here's the dxdiag.

[roberta591 · Accepted solution]

@shaken_martini First thing I checked is if your video chip is in the TS3 database and it is not there. Here is the how to I used for my GTX 960 - link - add a new video card to Sims 3 If you are a casual Windows user your going to have numerous issues with free space on the system 256Gb ssd. While its ok for advanced users, the casual Windows user should not have to contend with operating system house keeping to play games. Until ssds mature and come down in price there are issues that affect the benefits. I think ASUS is using the Nahimic audio driver. This is a sound effects mixer that adds echo and other affects and is known to crash games. Also check to see if there is a newer video driver.

[shaken_martini]

Thanks. I will try this, as soon as I get home.

[shaken_martini]

OK, I did everything as said you said.
Now it seems to works just fine.
I'm downloading my expansions again and will try with university again.

I will get back to you if all works out.

[hunnypooh1]

Hey I had the exact same problem you described and I know I'm really late I'm probably being able to help you with this but this is what I did to finally fix it after about a million different tries.

I changed my graphics. I usually play with much higher graphics on my gaming laptop but for some reason despite how smoothly it runs, when it has to travel to one of the world Adventure locations it does the exact same thing you described. So I thought maybe if I turn them all down to the default settings that the game first prescribed I can get around it. And it worked. And the best part is I can just turn them back up now that I made it past the dreaded loading screen and only have to repeat the  process when they have to return home.

Hope this helps someone at least. None of the other solutions I found on here for this problem helped and I was personally at it for like 3 hours. For a second I thought it was my brand new computer which was the problem, but sims 3 has always been glitchy as all get out so you do what you can.