Sims 3 restarts my pc when I try to play.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@potatobritt  Honestly, I'm not sure you'll be able to get TS3 up and running on this computer.  When it was new, it would have handled the base game fine, but almost ten years later, the hardware's performance will have slipped significantly.  Even new, this system wouldn't have been able to run TS3's most demanding packs well, if at all.

If you really want to try to play, you need to free up as much RAM for the game as possible.  This means restarting your computer immediately before launching and not running anything else, not even a browser window.  If you have a game folder in Documents, move it onto your desktop—it might contain a corrupt file that's causing or contributing to the crashes.  But it's also possible that your hardware is just not capable of meeting the demands of TS3.

Perhaps roberta591 will have more ideas to offer, but I'm just not sure that you can really play on this computer at all.

[roberta591]

@potatobritt  The biggest problem is your computer has a 32 bit operating system and a weak processor. The 32 bit operating system is dead. 3Gb of memory is low by today's standards with 8Gb of memory being standard. The 32 bit operating system can only access 4Gb of memory. The AMD A4 is weak  for 3D gaming. The A4 has an integrated video processor that is not very powerful (by today's standards). The video system borrows memory from main memory which leaves less for the game. I would not recommend adding anything to that laptop as you will still have an under performing machine. You may be able to get the base game running but as you add the more demanding expansion packs I feel your computer will not perform very well. Your laptop may still be a good student/business computer but 3D gaming is probably a stretch. The Intel I3 out performs the AMD A4 and the Intel I3 is the weakest of the Intel I series cpus. IMO AMD has not done well with laptop processors (AMD APU series). But the AMD FX and the new AMD Ryzen processors are giving Intel a good run for the money. The sttray.exe error is probably an issue with the audio driver. Video driver is out of date. There may be a memory issue and I'm guessing the memory modules may be miss matched. Get the audio system issue fixed and update the video driver would be a good start.