I'm a dumbass because I never saved my Supernatural and my Seasons downloads. While torrenting new copies to reinstall -- grasping at straws here. When applying this patch (the super one), I ran into a rather strange bug: The launcher will not open and claims that the installation is incomplete. I can open it with the awesomeupdater, but then all custom content is missing, and I cannot actually move anything in the game but the camera controls. Any tips?

Goodness. I thought I had it bad with the game crashing hard whenever someone tries to get mail.

Same mod configuration as you. Guess we'll have to hope that glitches get stomped out along the way. :/

mysimrealty.com has a lot of worlds to offer, large and small, lag intense and not so. Winchester Farming Community is small, no CC and lag free as they get, for instance.

Clearing caches and DCBackup files and starting the game again is being reported to work -sometimes-. Swearing at EA while doing so is optional.

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit so LAA shouldn't mean anything for me (feel free to correct me if mistaken). DEP does not seem to be the issue but I turned it on just case anyhows. I also checked every bit of road and sidewalk and finally reverted to an older save that did load in EIG. Considering that my world currently consists of four lots and a lot of flat terrain with large amounts of nothing, I am baffled.  Anyhow, thanks for the tip -- it certainly can't -hurt-.

I've finally found the courage / gotten bored enough with regular play to try to create my own world. I keep bumping head first into one particular problem, though: After a while the world file refuses to open in Game Edit. The green bar goes all the way to the right except a last millimeter, and then the load screen simply halts there forever. As far as I can tell, the issue is related to having placed houses on empty lots in Game Edit previously, but even if I make sure that there are no such 'clones', it stalls on me eventually. Surely there must be a work-around or fix for this, or at least some sort of indication of what I am doing wrong.

I am using no CC in building my lots, so I highly doubt that this is a case of tight pants. All patches are up to date, and all EPs are installed.

This seems to be true. I haven't previously been able to get them t write thank you notes, but when I moved a table to stand next by the mailbox it worked. This be dumb.

The Hot Springs in China work fine for me, but I've noticed increased route fail in general -- at times the whole lot of 'em act like they have a short term memory of 20 seconds when you queue things for them to do.

I noticed last night that a couple of toddlers from other households that I never touched aged instantly to young adults. I have played around with the age settings in the game, and I use no other aging hacks than what comes with AM (test version).

Yes. I wonder if it makes any difference that my insta-sculpting teen had raised sculpting a lot as a kid, making sandcastles, or it affects all teens.

It's a very old bug because it's been happening to me since the base game came out. It got 'upgraded' with Generations' reputation thingy, though: My vampire sim cheated on his first wife before I even installed Generations, and though that wife and the mistress both were long dead, his second wife celebrated the new EP by accusing him of cheating on wife no 1 and then broke up with him.

(I decided to let the hysterical bitch crash and burn).

If you mean in CAS I suspect that the two house mates need to be married before they both can be set as parents.

Remember how in S2, everyone would hop into your pool the instant they got on the lot? I have the opposite problem now -- no one ever uses the damn thing. Is there a known tuning mod out there that makes pools advertise just so much louder that every once in a while, athletic sims might go for a swim instead of working out at the tv, or non-athletics might even consider using the pool at all?

Flame away if my google fu is pathetic!

I was running forced vsync on the game, yes -- having read Pescado's warnings about expensive videocards turning into expensive paperweights and all that. In other news, the repair shop has called back now and let me know that the issue is a fried motherboard, so the point is moot -- to an extent, because this means I am starting to look around for a new machine, and I definitely want to be certain that the next one is an even mutanter space monster from even outerer space. Nova Stingray, I have my eyes on you.

Anyhow, thank you all for input and help. As it turns out, there wasn't much sims-related to poke at, but I appreciate the effort. Now to start saving pennies for a new machine.

My space monster is a laptop and it shall always be a space monster to me. That said, I do realise that the 8800M GTX is not the newest card on the market, but unless I am stupider than I thought (I'll leave the option open), it's still among the top ten best videocards for laptops. However, even if I am proved to be dumber than a wet brick on this question, I still feel the need to point out that the game ran flawlessly on high graphics settings until these crashes began to occur about three weeks ago. This is why I thought the issue might be Outdoors Living related at first.

For the sake of further argument I offer you my specs, as well as a virtual cup of coffee. The computer is currently sitting in the repair shop, though, since it is now refusing to acknowledge that it has a videocard at all (yeah, I don't think it's a Sims related problem anymore either). I am waiting eagerly by the phone for a call from the shop that will determine whether repairs are under warranty or I won't be eating this month (also, hyperbole is my friend).

On a slightly miffed note, I see what you did there, Hitch. However, blaming Pescado never crossed my mind. I came here because while MATY is, uh, reputable for eating the clueless and the stupid alive, and being anything but newbie friendly, it is also home to some of the most competent simmers around. I'll take my beatings in stride as long as I feel confident that the people calling me an idiot at least know what they're talking about.

Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 build 2600 (32-bit),   (I tested with Windows 7, 32-bit and 64-bit both, same crashes)
1 x Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9500 @ 2.60GHz,
3.0GB RAM,  (4 GB under win 7)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX,
186GB HDD,
DVD, DVD,

GENERAL
System Name: ALVIN-2E2B59A82
System Model: M570RU
Motherboard Manufacturer: CLEVO
Motherboard Name: SANTA ROSA
Motherboard Version: Not Applicable
Motherboard Serial Number: Not Applicable
BIOS Manufacturer: Phoenix
BIOS Version: PTLTD - 6040000
BIOS Release Date: 2007/12/12

CPU
CPU manufacturer: GenuineIntel
CPU Type: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9500 @ 2.60GHz
Codename: Penryn
CPUID: Family 6, Model 17, Stepping 6, Revision M0/C0
Socket: PGA478/BGA479
Lithography: 45nm
Physical CPU's: 1
Cores per CPU: 2
Hyperthreading: Not capable
CPU features: MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE4.1 DEP PAE Intel64 VMX
Clock frequencies:
Measured CPU speed: 2593.6 MHz
Multiplier: x13.0
Scalable Bus Speed: 200.0 MHz
Front Side Bus: 798.0 MHz
Cache per CPU package:
L1 Instruction Cache: 2 x 32 KB
L1 Data Cache: 2 x 32 KB
L2 Cache: 1 x 6144 KB

MEMORY
Total Physical Memory: 3070MB
Available Physical Memory: 2157MB
Virtual memory: C:\pagefile.sys (allocated base size 2046MB)

GRAPHICS
NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX
Chip Type: GeForce 8800M GTX
DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC
Memory: 512MB
BIOS: Version 62.92.19.00.A3
Driver provider: NVIDIA
Driver version: 6.14.12.6658
Driver date: 1-7-2011
Monitor 1: 1920x1200x32 60Hz (Primary monitor)

DISK VOLUMES
C: Local drive, NTFS, (186.30GB total, 76.16GB free)
D: Optical drive
F: Optical drive

DISK DRIVES
Diskdrev: Model ST9200420ASG (Size: 186.31GB)

OPTICAL DRIVES
Optiarc DVD RW AD-5540A
PQFO F8XEJ4LQBK5 SCSI CdRom Device

NETWORK
Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
Bluetooth PAN Network Adapter

PORTS
Kommunikationsport: COM1 - RS232 Serial Port (max Baud rate: 115200)
Keyboard Port: Mini-DIN connector
Mouse Port: Mini-DIN connector
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2834
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2835
- TouchStrip Fingerprint Sensor
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 283A
- ? ? (SN: ?)
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2830
- Wacom Co.,Ltd. MTE-450
- Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2831
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 2832
Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 2836

My mistake, brainfart, you name it. Yes, I did test with EA's launcher as well before formatting the drive anyhow. No, I don't usually use that thing.

Unless I'm critically misinformed, and I will of course allow for that option, the 8800M GTX is anything but outdated. That said, yes, I have in fact spent two weeks troubleshooting; clean installs of the game, EP by EP, updated anything that can be updated, clean install of Windows, XP first and 7 later on, and just about any test available. I'm late in replying because the machine spent the last 48 hours sitting in a repair shop running a stress test loop.

There is a new development, though: The computer now insists that the videocard is a generic vga card with 14 Mb RAM and refuses to install Nvidia's drivers, so we are one step closer to a solution; I gave the shop the weekend to either get its shit together or replace the videocard with its newest counterpart. I'm putting this plea for help on hold until they get back to me since there is reasonable suspicion that the videocard is to blame in spite of repeat tests claiming the opposite.

On a slightly butthurt note, where did I mention using the launcher? I spoke of being able to launch the game, not using EA's fuckpile of a rootkit.

A week or so I updated to patch 1.19 and installed Outdoors Living at the same time, both from the FANO torrent. Ever since I have been in crashy hell in spite of my computer being a mutant monster from outer space that is more than capable of running the game flawlessly and make coffee in between. At first the game would render yellow streaks and vertices and then crash randomly. Now I have installed Windows 7 on a shiny new hard drive and updated everything in the drivers department -- and now the launcher tells me it crashes unexpectedly, after which the sims intro attempts to fire up and the entire system freezes instead, causing the computer to self-reboot.

I am not a happy camper and I am running out of ideas very fast.

I have tested and poked my NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX to the point where it is considering filing a restraining order against me, and it checks out fine every time, even scoring 150k on AquaMark3's test (for those not in the know, that basically means it should be able to run the Sims 3 like a piece of cake). With the new hard drive I have eliminated the issue of five bad sectors that I thought was the culprit until now.

In the mods dept I am running clean with just awesomemod at the moment; unless one of EA's own store packs is the culprit I am not dealing with a bad mod or conflict in that area. I have tried running with Nraas' overwatch (while I could still -launch- the game) to eliminate memory leakage issues as well.

Help? Tips? Please? Pretty please?

Edit: I just noticed that the Sims Repair Utility from MTS selfdestructs after telling me that a value cannot be 0. I have no idea whether this is helpful in pinpointing the issue, though.

Good jogging routes with pretty views.
Bright, friendly lighting -- all three WA destinations rock in that regard, and Bridgeport sure as heck doesn't.
Downtown area with all required rabbitholes and a number of bars and clubs.
Less high end manors and more small family houses, with cribs.
Community lots that have been actually tested in game, as opposed to pretty overcluttered lots with routing fails.

I suck, and I realise it after reading this post and various others that searches brought up. Anyway, I didn't backup my TSLhost.dll file before patching and now I am stuck and stupid. Anyone feel like sharing so I can be stupid but less stuck?

Edit a few hours later:
I am stupid but I am also stubborn. This site has all the exes and tslhost files for all previous patches and packs: http://tehparadox.com/forum/f43/sims-3-all-expansions-stuff-packs-original-files-1473036/ -- hopes this helps anyone else. Me, I'm preening my google fu and feeling kind of fuzzywarm inside now. I'm also making backups.

In order to retain my small town feel most of my bars are hangouts and dive bars that should be accessible for pretty much everyone. There is only one place that has restrictions regarding celebrities and occults, everything else is open because, well, suburbia and all that white picket fence jazz. I'm going to try to add a few small town apartment buildings with NPC rabbit holes in order to increase population of a non-playable nature and increase the general population as well -- if the problem still persists after that, well, then I guess that hotspot hopping is just not going to be an option in my town.

AwesomeMod has been updated to deal with the empty clubs and bars as far as I gather from its page -- but I'm still having the problem. I have yet to see a single NPC who is not a mixologist or a bouncer at any place that sells booze in my town (custom world, Neverglade-based). I am starting to wonder if this is an issue with not playing in Bridgeport given that Pescado's fixes usually get the job done.

While making money is... not exactly a problem... in S3, I'd love to see donations of either kind affecting the homeless sims, nice ones helping them out and evil ones doing the opposite. It's not that my Good sim can't afford donating 1k a day -- it's just that there is no point for me to remember to make her. The moodlet? She already waltzes around in permanent euphoria because of the beautiful house and her painting obsession.

Oh, is -that- what happens... I had wondered about mystical donations like that.

Agreed -- I am seeing about one storymode action per night in Sunset Valley now, usually friending or antagonising. Lagburst is about 10 seconds.

Oh, and if Pescado doesn't shoot kittens then clearly he is not as evil as he's cracked up to be! True evil hates kittens, for kittens are the most powerful manifestation of adorable in the multiverse.