Problem with BV Patch Is anyone else getting an error message when they try to install the patch? It tells me I may have to un-install and re-install BV. What's that all about?
I wouldn't bother it, Meg. Throw it away. Looking at the list of fixes: I can hear Pescado's howls of hysterics from here, Talk about making soup out of your game. The Maxis nerds have gone into the game with a set of bolt-cutters and have crudely hacked out a malfunctioning component leaving sparking cut wires waving in the breeze and sharp metal edges. Put your fingers in your ears and your head between your knees and hope for the best.
LOL, Mirelly. You always manage to crack me up. But seriously, my game keeps crashing. I don't know if it's something the patch will fix or not. I thought I had fixed it when I went through the Hacks subfolder in my downloads and made sure everything was up to date for newer EPs. I managed to play for like 8 hours straight this past weekend. Now I'm back to a crash every hour or so. It gets really annoying, especially when the game already takes 15 minutes to re-load after each crash. It's a good thing there's a TV in my office, or I'd go nuts. At least I've got something to do while the game loads.
What are your system specs, Meg? See question 2 in the FAQs. The best way to be sure that the fault is NOT custom content related is to set up a "Vanilla" test set of game files. To do this rename your My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\ folder to something like _My_The Sims 2 (in other words just add _My_ to the front of the folder's name. The underscore sign is made with [SHIFT] + hyphen ) When you start up the game a new The Sims 2 folder will get made. When it loads up, delete two of the neighborhoods to save space. DON'T delete the Blossomhills (Seasons) hood though as this causes other problems. Play test some Maxis families and see if crashing occurs. Use the motherlode cheat and send the Brokes on vacation ... If no crashing occurs then you must blame your hacks. If crashing still occurs then maybe it is either BV ... or it could be your puter. Whether you keep your "vanilla" folder after using it to test is up to you and whether you have enough spare disc space to keep it. If possible keep it because a vanilla set of game files is always useful to test things (and loading is very much quicker.) Rename the vanilla folder with _Vanilla_The Sims 2 and then rename the original. Renaming folders is much quicker than moving them.
I hope I'm getting all this right - 1. Processor: Name and speed (MHz/GHz) - Intel Core 2 6300@1.86GHZ 2. System Memory RAM (MB/GB) - 100 GB of RAM 3. Windows Version (98/XP etc.) Windows XP 4. Free Hard Disk Space - 192 GB 5. Total Hard Disk Space - 228 GB 6. DirectX Version - 9.0c 7. Display Adapter (Graphic/Video Card) Name & Model Number - Radeon x1300 series 8. Display Driver Name and Version Number & date - ati2dvag.dll, version 6.14.0010.6660, 12/16/06 Edited: version 6.14.0010.6719, 8/21/07 (am about to try the game with the new driver) 9. Approximate Total Video Memory - 256 MB 10. Game Detail - Sims2, Uni, Nightlife, OFB, Pets, Seasons, BV, Family Fun, Glamour, Celebration, H&M I'll try the Vanilla version thing, and I'll go check to see if my driver has a new update. Last December seems like a while ago.
Good for you getting an updated driver. I don't see any other reasons for crashyness. The patch doesn't really seem to address any issues associated with random crashes, anyway. Your problem might be due to the duo core chip ... apparently the game ends up only using one of the two cores and then gets all confoozickled A relatively simple way to fix performance was posted at MATY
I was all excited, about to shut down the game to go to bed. I had been playing since my last post (about 2 1/2 hours-ish?), and BOOM. Crash. Since it's bedtime, I'll have to try the Vanilla version either tomorrow or Friday. But I did do that whole dual core fix thing (and while it seems simple, it can get confusing--of course it could be because it's past bedtime for me). Maybe that will fix it. :(
Hmmm ... it might just be a quirk of you computer ... the way its bits and pieces work together (or rather the way they don't work together ). If you are not able to pinpoint a particular situation which always (or almost always) causes a crash then we're really looking at a simple, random, hardware/software issue. If you can regularly get up to 2+ hours between crashes, then the best I can suggest is to make sure you save your game every 10/20 minutes. A good habit to get into is to always save before your sims start to wake up. It's a good safe point for a save (for installing EPs/patches etc.) and a daily save means that you never lose more than a sim-day's worth of play. All computers crash, especially Windows ones. For most of us, this is an increasingly rare occurrence, but there are still plenty of situations where crashes can be more likely than usual. If you really want to be sure you have covered all your bases, then it might be a sound idea to consider reinstalling Windows and the game. Of course you need a DVD burner or a spare hard drive to store all your data (or another computer and a network connection). Sleep, on the other hand, fixes all manner of problems and listen to wrinkly old gran'mas they'll even try and convince you that a good sleep will fix a broken puter. Funnily enough it does seem to be true, in the same way that engineers sometimes "repair" broken apparatus by leaving entirely alone for a couple of days (the so-called Bench Fix) ... or when you're tired, little problems are very annoying, after a good kip, in the yellow light of dawn, no problem is too big and everything is beautiful (in its own way) ... ooh, I feel a song coming on.
Well, so far the vanilla version is working fine. I played for quite a while last night. I also managed to add back in some of my downloads to see if they were causing a problem. I think I'll keep doing that until I find the batch that's messing it up. Thanks for the tip on changing the folder name, Mirelly!
Just wanted to give you an update: Today I played for about 12 hours with no crashes (yeah, I have no life ). I've already added in my most important hacks, my downloaded hair files, downloaded makeup, and some of my favorite custom objects (gotta love Holy Simoly). It must have been either conflicting hacks or I just had too many downloads. I haven't messed with the clothes yet, but I'm thinking of sorting them into Modern and Medieval/Period folders and only playing with one set at a time, depending on the hood I'm playing. But yay for no crashes!
Okay, I'm posting this here because it's kind of related to my previous problem. I think I found the downloads that were causing my crashing - a Teleporter Bush and a Teleporter painting that I used to make sims into townies and adopt townie children as well as townie teens. The problem might be because IngeJones made them and they are no longer supported. Does anyone know of a hack that does the same things that would work with BV?
I do have the teleporter bush and I haven't had any issues with my game crashing on me. That's kind of besides the point though to your question However http://www.insimenator.net/ would help out with this. Once you have it downloaded into the game you'll notice you have the option that says "spawn" when you click on the ground. One of the options is "the summoner" Click on that, a empty cardboad box will appear. That gives you a lot of the same options that Inge's bushes did. Basically the Insimenator gives you access to all the boolprop tricks without turning boolprop testing on.
