The Sims 2 crashing before I can even play

I bought the game a week or two ago and was experiencing random crashing after an hour or two of playing. Since last night (23rd June) the EA app did an update and restarted after I'd finished playing, I went back on today and no matter what I do the game crashes before I can even play! Once I've picked a family to play as it goes to their loading screen then suddenly crashes with no warning. Throughout all these crashes I've not once received any sort of error message. Repairing the files from the EA app does nothing, neither does deleting cache files or turning off shadows. I've been scouring the forum for ages and can't find a solution that works :(