My game keeps crashing! Make it stop!!!

The current RAM limitations for TS3 are these.

Windows: 4 GB. (the original 2 GB limit was lifted with Patch 1.17 almost eleven years ago)

Mac original version: 2 GB

Mac 64-bit version: Effectively no limit, up to the amount of RAM physically available and not in use (this doesn't necessarily make the game more stable as there are other issues to cope with)

When content or mods misbehave, the game can just keep calling for more and more resources until it crashes. It doesn't matter where the RAM limit is, or if there even is one, when that happens.

@igazor my computer is 4GB RAM but I may be getting a new computer in the future since this one I'm on was a hand-me-down from my late grandmother.

@HillyBeth - Okay, this is different. And that's odd, I'm pretty sure I've seen the specs of your computer several times now and I don't remember it only having 4 GB. I'm getting old and there are too many of you players ( :) ), maybe I have yours confused with someone else's. Isn't this the one with the 940M or 940MX card or was that a different system?

Anyway, the game will certainly run on 4 GB total, but on modern operating systems it won't run well for very long as things progress. Windows itself will be using up to half of that RAM to keep things running and the game will start "paging out" (using virtual memory) far too soon. TS3 is not stable when relying on virtual memory. And if you launch a single extra application like a web browser while the game is running, it's probably going to be game over for that session.

Bad CC or poorly performing mods can still be factors. But if "soon" for that new computer turns out to be later than you would like and assuming you indeed are running a 64-bit operating system and not a 32-bit version of Windows, you might want to get pricing on a RAM upgrade to 8 GB. It may not cost as much as you think these days.

@igazor if the new computer doesn't happen anytime soon I put in a request to my parents for a 8GB RAM upgrade for my next birthday(October)

@HillyBeth Would you mind sharing which pregnancy mod you have? So I can see if I have the same one in my game. Thanks.

CC can be a real mystery sometimes. I had two pieces of CAS cc (an accessory and a hair) from two very trusted cc creators and when I put them on my sims in CAS - creating new family - and then tried to move them into a new home, the game crashed. Took me forever to figure out what was going on (had to run to @Igazor cause I was in a panic. :p ) I removed those two cc items when recreating them and voila I was able to move them into a home just fine. Weird huh?

It's like, you test all your cc through the Dashboard, it tells you all is fine, and you always clear your caches before running the game with new cc in it, so you THINK you're doing right by your game, and then something still manages to make it crash... :confounded: I'm like, "What gives!?"

*If anyone ever finds themselves in this situation, and you can't live without that certain piece of cc, do what Igazor told me...create your sims with the bare minimum stuff in CAS (I would say no cc and don't give them occult status), move them into a house, THEN dress them up how you want and set occult status via MC - Edit in CAS when you're playing them in Live mode. :star:

Wise words from the Wizard that I must ever remember. :blush:

@emorrill the Delphy's Dashboard tool is very old and hasn't been updated. It is a good thing to have as the other option is just take pot luck. But it has problems. It can incorrectly tell you something is corrupt when it isn't and it can miss issues that have arisen since it was first made. So if you check you CC with it and it all looks good, it is still best to test it in a different Sims 3 folder before adding it to your game in case it does something that you can't get rid of. For example that counter that mutated so much that it became impossible to get rid of once it had infected your game. Only way to get rid of it was to start a new Sims 3 Folder and not add anything back from the infected folder. I haven't heard of it for a long time now but we used to discuss it in great depth years ago. I hope it's gone forever.

@Karritz - (coughs and raises hand) I had that counter infect my game's content. It's the only piece of bad CC I've ever picked up, as far as I know, and it was my fault for thinking the sim I had added to my game was coming from a totally trusted source.

And it was not impossible to get rid of. But it took a couple of days of trying. Didn't I ever tell this story here, with my neighbors still wondering now a few years later why they must have suddenly heard a scream of "Aha, I gotcha! Now get out of my life forever!" coming from my apartment at 2 am when I finally cornered the stupid thing and flushed it out? :)

@igazor well done. I've read countless people say they spend months trying to get rid of it and every time they think it's gone it pops up again. You might have to record the steps you took to be rid of it for the next person who has to deal with it. Hopefully though it's gone from everywhere.

I know of people who decided to just live with it in their game because they couldn't find a way of getting rid of it and didn't want to lose saves they'd played for a really long time.

"Karritz;c-17865843" wrote:
You might have to record the steps you took to be rid of it for the next person who has to deal with it.

To be fair now, I did have a couple of head starts that most players are not going to have. One is that I already had a full understanding of how sims3pack to DCC Cache dbc file bundles work. The other is that I knew precisely which sim I introduced to my game was carrying the bogus counter object, I could even find it with Custard and clean it out or choose to rid my game of that custom sim entirely, I had just been a dunderhead for assuming that a fellow player at NRaas who had been there even longer than I had wouldn't be passing this thing around, but she had no idea what I was talking about until several other players and I performed an intervention on her and her downloads. Lesson learned, if my own mother (who doesn't really play computer games) were to send me a customized sim, you can be sure it won't get anywhere near my game until it's checked out first. :)

Most players with much more extensive player-made collections might have no idea where to even begin looking and keeping the source of the object in play is indeed just going to cause it to keep coming back and spreading. :/

@Karritz Good to know. ? I didn't even think about how the Dashboard is not supported or updated anymore... *sigh*

Oh yes, the dreaded Arezzo Counter...

I think you remember when I mentioned it on the main thread showing up in my game and not remembering where I downloaded it from. :lol:

For me it came from a custom world I downloaded, so when I got rid of that world, it took the counter with it. I got lucky. :star:

@Igazor You crack me up once again! :lol:
And I call you the Wizard of this game and you don't even acknowledge?? :open_mouth:
j/k ;) :p <3