crash after a couple of minutes of playing

[10helmi]

I have no clue why this has started to happen. A couple of weeks ago, I saved my game and left my computer running (energy saving mode) with my Sims 3 on pause. When I came back to use my laptop hours later my game had crashed. 

Ever since when I have tried to play Sims, I can only get it to work for 2-5 minutes before my game freezes for a few seconds, my screen turns black, and then the whole Sims 3 window just disappears. I don't even get an alert of the game crashing, but Origin temporarily turns into a simple gray square for a second before going back to normal.

(While playing those 2-5 minutes, I've also sometimes had the problem of the game selecting multiple family members to control at once. The character icons all get that white square around them, it goes away when I click the not-actually-selected character icons with the right side of my mouse, but the white squares on the icons only stop appearing when I save my game and go back to the main menu and then start the game from there again. I used to get the same issue before the game crashing problem too, so I'm not very worried about it.)

So far I've tried installing updates via Origin, fixing the game via Origin and emptying my DCBackupfolder (except for the cc.merged.package file). Playing with a different family/world doesn't stop the issue either.

I'm playing the game via Origin because I don't have a disc slot on my laptop. I have multiple world expansions.

Any suggestions what could cause this & how to fix it? 

Sorry for my clumsy explanation of the situation, English isn't my native language.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@10helmi  Do you normally delete the five cache files in your TS3 game folder?  (This is good practice even when you're not having issues.)  For reference, they are:

• CASPartCache.package
• compostorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

If that doesn't help, try removing your entire game folder from Documents.  When you launch TS3 again, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Start a new save and test it out, just to make sure everything works.  If it does, you can start adding the content from your old game folder into the new one, a few files at a time.  If you start seeing crashes again, you'll know that one of the files you just moved is corrupt, and you can narrow it down from there.

One other thing to keep in mind is that when you exit a save to the Main Menu and then enter another save, the game doesn't let go of all the data from the save you just stopped playing.  So you can end up transferring that data into the new save and corrupting it.  It's always best to quit to desktop and then reload from there.

If you can't play for more than a few minutes even in a clean game folder, please run a dxdiag and attach it here (use the Browse button).  Please also list the packs you have installed.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

P.S.  Your English is great—better than many native speakers who post here.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@10helmi  Do you normally delete the five cache files in your TS3 game folder?  (This is good practice even when you're not having issues.)  For reference, they are:

• CASPartCache.package
• compostorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

If that doesn't help, try removing your entire game folder from Documents.  When you launch TS3 again, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Start a new save and test it out, just to make sure everything works.  If it does, you can start adding the content from your old game folder into the new one, a few files at a time.  If you start seeing crashes again, you'll know that one of the files you just moved is corrupt, and you can narrow it down from there.

One other thing to keep in mind is that when you exit a save to the Main Menu and then enter another save, the game doesn't let go of all the data from the save you just stopped playing.  So you can end up transferring that data into the new save and corrupting it.  It's always best to quit to desktop and then reload from there.

If you can't play for more than a few minutes even in a clean game folder, please run a dxdiag and attach it here (use the Browse button).  Please also list the packs you have installed.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

P.S.  Your English is great—better than many native speakers who post here.

[10helmi]

Thank you so much for the quick reply! 

I've been too busy to play any games recently, but I think the method you suggested would work in most of the cases with this kind of crashes. But I noticed that my computer had another issue; it wouldn't run .exe files anymore. I got that fixed and now my game doesn't crash anymore.

Thanks for the tip on deleting the five cache files too, I hadn't done that in a long time.