Forum Discussion

kinsaray's avatar
kinsaray
Seasoned Newcomer
6 years ago

Crashing on new Alienware Aurora a few minutes into game.

Running Windows 10 and DirectX 12 btw.

Removed mods folder, added TS3W to NVIDIA Panel, change to high priority in Task Manager - doesn't work. Still getting this exact same error with each fix attempt. Has this ever been attributed to a rogue .sims3pack? Out of ideas and no help from Google.

Pastebin link: https://pastebin.com/vpMPk5pV
  • Crash logs are generally not all that helpful, unless the game hit its RAM limit, which is not the case here. It would be better if you could run a dxdiag instead; that will contain a lot more information, potentially including which system files might be throwing errors.

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

    Please also check your in-game fps, or confirm that it's locked to the refresh rate of your monitor. It sounds like you already know to do this, but just in case:

    https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16540301/#Comment_16540301

    You can test the rogue sims3pack theory, and the possibility of a corrupt file in general, by pulling your entire TS3 game folder out of Documents and onto your desktop. When you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn. You can try out a new save, and if it doesn't crash, copy over the existing save that's giving you trouble. If you get the missing objects warning, it doesn't matter—this is just a copy of the save, and you can mess with it however you want while the original is safe in your old game folder.

    It would also help to test with just NRaas mods in place, if you use them. If only the one save is affected, ErrorTrap in particular may throw an error or two that could let you know why your game is crashing. You'd need to upload the log(s) at NRaas, not here, but igazor and co. would be able to tell you what they meant and what, if anything, you should do about the issue.

    https://www.nraas.net/community/chatterbox
  • Well, I don't see anything wrong with your computer, which you probably already knew. Even the TS3 crashes don't list anything useful, at least as far as I can tell. There's a new version of your graphics card driver, but if a new save ran fine, that's not likely to be the issue. So it's entirely possible that the save itself is the source of the problem.

    Before you trash it though, I'm wondering how it runs in a clean folder, with only NRaas mods present. If this is what you did already, when it ran just a bit longer, then never mind. But you could try a MasterController reset of the whole town as soon as the save loads and the game clock starts running. If there's something stuck or misfiring, the reset might wipe it and allow you to play forward.

    And if that doesn't work, you can try the same steps as above, except with a backup save. Even if you never made one yourself, the game keeps the file from the second-to-last time you saved. You'll find the folder, labeled .sims3.backup, inside Saves, along with your regular save folders. Delete the .backup extension and rename the save, and you can load it, either in a clean folder or your existing one. It's a good idea to make a copy of this backup before you start testing it though, just in case.
  • kinsaray's avatar
    kinsaray
    Seasoned Newcomer
    No NVIDIA Inspector on either computer - and yes, this was happening on my prior computer.
    These are Sims 3 disks if that helps (I started playing Sims 3 on Origin until they removed some packs. I refused to pay again so I bought the disks from eBay).

    Monitor and game refresh rate is 60. On the non-crashing game, fps drops with camera movement, 60 at standstill or rapid fluctuation between 59-60 fps with no camera movement, depending on what a sim is doing.
  • kinsaray's avatar
    kinsaray
    Seasoned Newcomer
    Thanks puzzlezaddict,
    Still crashed with only NRAAS mods, though the game lasted a bit longer.
    I did remove the folder and started new, of course no problems. I was just hoping I wouldn't have to start from scratch.
    Anyway, here is my dxdiag

    https://pastebin.com/H2nSPVzU
  • "MadIris;c-17008277" wrote:
    Thanks puzzlezaddict,
    Still crashed with only NRAAS mods, though the game lasted a bit longer.
    I did remove the folder and started new, of course no problems. I was just hoping I wouldn't have to start from scratch.
    Anyway, here is my dxdiag

    https://pastebin.com/H2nSPVzU


    Do you have your FPS capped and your graphics card recognized properly by the game?
    @igazor crash issues.
  • Afraid I'm detecting a recurring theme here on the OP's threads. I'm sorry, but we keep asking this and are not getting an answer other than the OP is (was) not using Nvidia Inspector, although that may have been on a prior computer. With TS3w.exe added to the Nvidia Control Panel as said was already done, and presumably vertical sync switched to On or Adaptive as required, Triple Buffering On, what kind of frame rates are you actually getting in-game? The Control Panel alone is often not enough to lock things in and it will never work in windowed mode, only in full screen when it does.

    With the game loaded, one that does not crash in ten seconds, ctrl+shift+C to bring up the cheats console. Type fps on (enter). As you play and move the game camera around, the fps rate displayed in the tiny circle should never exceed the refresh rate of your monitor. Yours like most is 60 Hz, so 60 fps. To make the display go away, cheats console again and type fps off (enter).

    This might not really be the issue, any my apologies if this was already tended to and I missed the discussion about it, but it's important enough to check on and rule out if we can. If things are really staying locked in at or below 60 fps during gameplay, then we can move on to other suggestions and solutions.
  • Okay, that's good and was important to get out of the way/rule it out.

    In that case, since the game performs properly on a new game folder, I would say we are back to suspecting that some form of rogue CC is acting up. Identifying which exactly it might be can be very tricky, it could be one or more sims3packs or something that is coming along for the ride on installed custom lots or sims if you use those. You would probably want to proceed with the new game folder, perhaps adding a very small amount of your CC in at a time while checking to make sure the issue does not return. With enough of that you should hopefully be able to continue with your ongoing saved games copied over if that was part of the goal, only without the crash issue recurring.