Seasons is crashing

[Cons]

So now to figure out why....I redid the hacks so pretty sure they aren't the culprits. Seems to cause an audio stammer or cut out and then you get the dreaded "This Application has crashed and will now terminate" box.

I deleted groups.cache which fixed this glitch with OFB. Cpuld possibly be video drivers (Nvidia) I'm using some really old ones which were great in pets but maybe not so great with Seasons? I'll try the 81.98's the one person said were working ok with OFB & Pets.

Here's the log of the last two crashes...different neighbor hoods.

Exception time: 03/03/2007, at 00:22:57.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 1812 (0x00000714).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSBin\Sims2EP5.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP5
Application/module version: 1.7.0.145
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 112 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT


Extra Exception Data:

Shutdown: 0
HostName: HOME2
MemoryUsage: 668828K
Neighborhood Name: Veronaville
Neighborhood Prefix: N003
Lot Name: Visionary Villa - 3+ BR 2.5 BA
Family Name: Jalowitz
Extra Exception Data End:

Exception module:  .
Exception address: 0xb7c4b8b8. Section:Offset: 0x00:0x00000000.

R
Call stack:
(Debug information (.pdb files) appears to be absent).
0x0000:0x00000000 .
0x0001:0x0085db6b C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSBin\Sims2EP5.exe public: virtual bool __thiscall cTSAudioCOMDirector::OnStart(class cIGZCOM *)() + 1019269



NEXT NEIGHBORHOOD:

Exception time: 03/03/2007, at 18:42:32.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 2980 (0x00000ba4).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSBin\Sims2EP5.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP5
Application/module version: 1.7.0.145
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 160 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT


Extra Exception Data:

Shutdown: 0
HostName: HOME2
MemoryUsage: 899524K
Neighborhood Name: Pleasantview
Neighborhood Prefix: N001
Lot Name: 215 Sim Lane
Family Name: Pleasant
Extra Exception Data End:

Exception module:  .
Exception address: 0x19dd837d. Section:Offset: 0x00:0x00000000.


Call stack:
(Debug information (.pdb files) appears to be absent).
0x0000:0x00000000 .

S
The one thing all of the crashes have in common is the CTSAudioComDir With the exception of the one above. All the other crashes in Veronaville have that line.

Any clues what it is? Hate to reinstall and find it's a driver glitch. Off to see if by chance there is a driver update for the sound but I doubt it. AC97 doesn't update all that often.

[Cons]

Ah hah...a new sound driver is available. Put out in 11/2006...bout once a year they seem to do this?Last were 7/2005. Cool!
Got it now to mess around and install it.See if that's it.

If you can tell anything by the parts of those logs let me know. Appreciate it.

[Cons]

New drivers in, crashed again after about 2 hours of play. Again the same stack call referring to the
Cts audio com Director. Crashes when they are gardeing mostly. Weeding or this time harvesting the Oranges. Weird. Guess try new video drivers next. After that I'm at a total loss. Maybe delete the
groups.cache again.....

[Bangelnuts]

sounds like your available Ram is pretty low  try shutting down back ground task's see if that helps

[blubug]

I thought so too. A friend once told me an "access violation" happens if the game is looking for more resources (memory=RAM) and accidentally tries to take some of the memory needed by windows. And windows is a spoiled brat who doesn't like sharing.
So I just added a bit more ram and changed the size of the virtual memory (paging?) file and I rarely get those crashes.

[Cons]

I looked at the free amount of ram in some of the crashes last year and there is no reason for an Access Violation with this amount of ram free:
Exception time: 11/15/2006, at 23:25:45.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 3064 (0x00000bf8).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSBin\Sims2EP3.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP3
Application/module version: 1.3.0.351
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 356 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT

Exception time: 01/08/2007, at 21:45:28.
Exception code: 0xC0000005 (-1073741819) ACCESS_VIOLATION.
Current thread ID: 2120 (0x00000848).
Version information:
Application/module path: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Open For Business\TSBin\Sims2EP3.exe
Application/module version name: The Sims 2 EP3
Application/module version: 1.3.0.351
System version: Windows NT 5.1
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 320 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT

However that being said, definitely a drop in free ram here. However never had a crash in Pets so don't know if the ram count was lower or not. Might be that damn antivirus which always is a resource hog and this one has no way to kill it completely. I may switch programs. But sitting here just running the net
system information shows the following. I don't have many programs to kill off because I don't load much stuff. I just don't have a lot of crap running like most people do other than XP's junk.



User Name   HOME2\Connie
Time Zone   Central Standard Time
Total Physical Memory   1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory   728.70 MB
Total Virtual Memory   2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory   1.96 GB
Page File Space   2.40 GB
Page File   C:\pagefile.sys

This being said it ran for 2 hours last night with the DL folder and hacks out playing Rosehill/dale vanilla state with no crash. Memory leak in the damn game? They had one in Sims1. Ususally hit after playing for a few hours.

[Cons]

This old, but this was a problem in Diablo and seems Nivida drivers could be the problem.
http://www.opentechsupport.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1387

That being said I guess I'll try and update those and see if that stops it. That could be the drain on the resources.

Still snooping out blurbs on this.

[Cons]

Here's more on "Access Violations:
2 - The game terminates suddenly

Access Violation
The processor was instructed to access a piece of information on a memory location that either does not exist, or that the current process has no access to (for example, because it belongs to a different process). It invariably means that there is a bug somewhere, because normally this should never happen. Accessing memory through an uninitialized pointer can cause this, or accessing memory through a pointer that has been released back to Windows previously. Now, the question that remains is whether this is caused by the game code (and thus is a bug in the game) or a driver. If problem is reproducible in the game (as in: load a save game, do the same steps over and over again, and each time it crashes at the same spot), then it's most likely a problem in the game, and should be reported in the appropriate bug forum.

Note again a driver reference. And we know Nvidia drivers and Sims2 have glitches.

[jrd]

Nvidia drivers are the only things which ever make my XP crash these days. Then again I tend to use the leaked betas....

[Cons]

Could very well be tham. I meant to give the link that I found that about Access Violations. It's a good read and pertains to most games.
http://forums.amd.com/lofiversion/index.php/t35679.html

[blubug]

I only get it when I'm entering a lot. The lot loading time is average, I suppose, if it takes a little too long, I just move the mouse to discover the "This program has performed an ...(something-illegal operation) and had/has to be terminated" window. It's never happened while playing the game, just loading lots. I'd say it was a game bug. (I do have a Nvidia card, but I blame the game anyway)

[Cons]

blubug..can you not get into any lot and play? I do notice the lots in hoods I had before I installed seasons
are slow loading but I don't get the dreaded "This Application has crashed blah blah until I play for awhile.
Maybe a couple of hours or maybe a few minutes...not real consistent there.

Now I seem to be able to play Rosehill or whatever it's called.Lots load fast there. Going to load everything back up (CC and Hacks)and go there
and see what happens. My last resort is to change these drivers on the Video card. But with Nvidia drivers being so hit and miss for this game......this could be a long drawn out process with no fix even after I do that. Worked so good in Pets.....everything worked in Pets.

I'm like you lets blame the game. Works for me.

[notveryawesome]

I've had similar problems, and I do NOT have an Nvidia card, so a game bug seems a likely culprit. Before my latest reinstall of Pets, I was having problems with all but the smallest of lots crashing upon loading, or rather *not* loading. It did not seem to matter whether the lots were custom or Maxis, or whether or not they used CC.  Anything larger than a 2x3 lot would crash during the loading process. I never did figure out the problem, but culling my Downloads folder from 6.71 GB to just over 3 GB seems to have helped (or perhaps the reinstall alone did the trick - dunno). I have a high-end computer, and do not have Seasons.

Another problem I had before reinstalling was that my Downloads folder seemed to have become corrupted (or something). For example, in the Buy catalogue I found a Maxis armoire with a recolour that looked like rooftiles. Deleting the weird texture caused some totally different custom object to completely disappear from the catalogue. This actually happened with several objects - that's just one example. I never did figure out what caused that particular problem, but it seems to be cured since the reinstall. The new problem I'm having is with recolours of Maxis objects overwriting the original textures *if* the recolours are subfoldered. This only happens on objects that do not normally have colour options, such as paintings, certain lamps, and the Patio Plastics chair. Once I move the recolours from their subfolder(s) into the main Downloads directory, the original colours of the objects, along with their recolours, appear when I look at the item details in the catalogue. I really don't want all these files floating around in the main directory, but I also don't want custom textures overwriting the originals. It's very irritating. Stupid EA.

I didn't mean to highjack your thread, Cons, but I've experienced similar problems (plus others), and really would like to know what might have caused them.

[Cons]

Notsoveryawesome
No problem. Only way we'll get to the bottom of the cause of these crashes is to put them all together.
I've looked on other BBS's to see what's causing crashes lately and there are several with problems out there.

I had a crash problem in OFB..somehow got it fixed. Nothing in Pets, ran smooth as silk and now Seasons is giving me a bizare headache. This machine is big enough to handle most anything...
2.2GZ Athlon64 processor, 1 gig of Ram, 256 meg video card, 160 gig HDD with an 8 meg cache, surely to god that's enough for Sims2. Crud I build computers....and this one has me baffled. Shouldn't be a hardware issue unless it's a driver on that video card.

The only time I had the weird graphics like your describing was in OFB and it was a driver issue. I had to roll back my video driver to an older version. But I didn't think it affected ATI cards as much as Nvidia. Unless you have a catalyist driver that's way too old for the game. Then they were having some glitches with those. My maxis content had strange modeling effects on it. Didn't look like roofing tiles, but a whole new design pattern.At that time I had no CC Downloads so I knw it wasn't that.

[Bangelnuts]

there is a massive memory leak during seasons play I checked my available Ram prior to firing up the game it said 772 MB available  while the game is running its reduced to 159 MB of available Ram

[Cons]

That's a good possibility. When I'm at idle I have about 760 megs free, then down to 148? Big leak if that's right. They had one in Sims1. So could very well be it.

[witch]

there is a massive memory leak during seasons play I checked my available Ram prior to firing up the game it said 772 MB available  while the game is running its reduced to 159 MB of available Ram

How big is your downloads folder?

[Cons]

That's not it Witch. I just loaded with 1/4 of my DL's and hacks and it crashed. Log said 124 meg available at the crash. System performance showed 728 available right after it closed. That's a usage of 604 megs to load this game? I think not folks. I don't have anything running to drain it when the game is playing.
My DL folder is only 503 meg at present. Originally it had 2.5 gig in it. So you'd think it could load 503 meg without draining the memory.It loads fast though. Loaded fast with the 2.5 gig in there.
Crash Memory data
System memory: 1024 Megabytes total, 124 Megabytes free.
Application/module configuration: ReleaseSRT

[Cons]

Bangelnuts
 I reloaded. Checked system memory under preformance tab in Task Manager before I loaded the game,
then let it load to Riverblossomhills to Viego House, then hit alt-tab, opened task manager read the memory
usage at that point, and then had to close it using "endtask"...then rechecked the memory after winders closed it: Here's the results:
Physical Memory
Before load   731196 meg available
At the check in game  204048 meg available
After I closed it          750680 meg available

The Kernal Memory takes a hit also:
Before 84500
At the check in game 99388
After the close     82360

[Bangelnuts]

there is a massive memory leak during seasons play I checked my available Ram prior to firing up the game it said 772 MB available  while the game is running its reduced to 159 MB of available Ram

How big is your downloads folder?

MY dl  is 3gb in size however I removed the DL folder for this check on the RAM,it got even worse at Uni the leak continued and reduced  ram to 95.7 MB of available Ram. I am currently culling  my DL folder ie getting rid of  stuff I never use.  CC furniture is being culled right now  and reduced significantly at the moment,next will be decor,then clothing and hair. what I will leave in is only the stuff I use all the time everything else is being deleted

[ZiggyDoodle]

there is a massive memory leak during seasons play I checked my available Ram prior to firing up the game it said 772 MB available  while the game is running its reduced to 159 MB of available Ram

I have two gigs. Cacheman reports about 1.65 MB before I load the game, and then around 500 (or less) once Seasons has been loaded, played a bit, and I alt-tab back to the desktop. 

Will load Cacheman on my other system tonight (Win ME), which has the base game, NL, and Pets, to check the memory readings with that setup.

[Cons]

It;s weird. Just plain weird. Loaded it this afternoon with CC removed and just hacks and hacked objects in the DL folder. (This should get you a crash, yes?) No crash. Played for 3 1/2 hours, it was zippier in the rotations,played like it did before I put Seasons in, which was zippy and smooth but with 2.5 gig of Custom DL in there. I have not changed my drivers yet.

I've seen posts onTSR where they've played for 5 days and are now getting the "Application has Crashed" messages. But didn't before.

I have no clue what's going on with it. May load it later tonight and find it crashes or it may go ahead and play just fine. I'm playing Roseblossomhills where there is no CC lots unless I add a hacked object. (The Computer, exerciser, Easel and Coffee pot). So I can maybe now assume those are good to go. Maybe...
who knows. Didn't check the memory during this load but went back through all my log files and after Open For Business was installed is when it had crashes with the really low memory.It never crashed in Pets so I have no idea about it. Pets is when I had the most Custom Downloads in it.

Kind of makes you wonder if there was a memory leak in OFB, the patch fixed it, Pets didn't have one or it did and they fixed it in the patch because I put Pets in and the patch in right after install before I started it up.Now maybe Seasons has a memory leak and depending on how much ram you have would depend on how quick it would crash or how long your playing at one sitting?

[ZiggyDoodle]

Installed Cacheman on a Win ME Pentium III Dell Dimension 4100 with 512 MB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9200 card.  Base game, NL, OFB and Pets on that machine, plus a 545 MB downloads folder.  Graphics set to low.

Cacheman reported available RAM of 324 MB at the desktop, reduced to 32 MB in Pleasantview and after opening Bluewater and playing the Tinker family for a few minutes, available RAM was down to 8 MB.  Sucky performance.

512 just doesn't do it, unless one is using the experience as a form of punishment.

The HD on my 8400 disappeared and it's at the shop right now, but something was sucking up the 2 gigs on that system before it went down - and I never even got into winter.

[Cons]

ZiggyDoodle, I agree with you. It's sucking way too much ram in any version of the game. I thought about
putting it on my husband's machine and seeing what it did with a differnt processor and video card.

He's got an Athlon XP2800+ Barton Core 2.1 GZ machine with a Nvidia FX5700 128 meg video card. Older drivers than mine I think. He doesn't do anything to warrant a driver change.Also has a gig of ram on that machine. Have Sims1 on that machine for the Granddaughter to play when she comes over. She's 10.

You have Dell's? Intel ? If so that answers my next question. I was curious if it was an A64 problem with the Sims2. I had seen a post on EA's board by a gal that had an AMDX2 and was having problems. Now any dual core processor (AMD or Intel) shouldn't have any trouble at all running this game.

I started with winter so at least I've seen that and when I played yesterday I got into spring but never have made it into summer or fall.

Just think how much ram you'd need if you were running this on a Vista machine. To run Vista you need 2 gig if you want to do anything at all...with this sucking of memory by the game you'd better have 4 gigs in those machines to play it.

[KatEnigma]

I'm running on an AMD X2 3800, and I'm not having any major issues. It IS lagging more than I'd like, but I blame my new AV for that (I'm SOOO about to uninstall the damn thing!!!) The "sweet spot" for TS2 seems to be about 1.5-2 GB RAM. The more CC you have, the more RAM you need. Now, I don't believe Pes when he says you need twice the amount of RAM as CC, but there's no way less than 1 GB of RAM is going to be anywhere near enough if you have a lot of CC, either.