Unplayable bug

When you say freezes in "Saving" What do you mean exactly? Are you getting an error 12? If you exit the game to the menu and go back is your save not there? Have you tried using "Save as" instead of "save" and renaming the save file.Have you tried a fresh sims 3 folder?(Copy the Sims 3 Folder and put it somewhere safe.Then delete the one in the electronic arts folder and start your game.) Do you have 3rd party CC or mods in your game?

I had the issue with hanging on save after installing Supernatural from a faulty disk and eventually got it reinstalled from another disk.It can also happen if the computer's fan is dying or the hard drive is full.Error 12's used to happen to me just from turning the EA bugfest on.I save as and do that at least a few times each simday now and that hardly ever happens.

Are you playing on a PC or MAC? How much RAM do you have? Are you playing a big, medium or small world?

Sims 3 runs best on a PC and if you have 6 GB or more RAM, and you should never let the game use more than 3,5 GB RAM. The longer you play in a session the more RAM it will use. It the game uses between 3,5 and 3,7 GB RAM then you'll get Error 12 and the game won't save.

When I have played for a couple of hours I click Control+Alt+Delete to open the Task Manager, and in Processes I see how much RAM is used by the game.

I recommend that you use the NRaas Overwatch and Errortrap mods. They help with some bugs and errors in the game that can affect the RAM usage. For example, it stops the game from spawning tons of cars that accumulate in the inventories of sims in the world you play.

It might (or might not) help the OP a little if they accepted the fact that there are no representatives of EA here on these forums to address except for the moderators. That's why they are getting a barrage of helpful players responding instead of anyone more official. We are still here to help each other with our games, the "you guys" being addressed do not exist. There has been no TS3 development since the final gameplay changing patch was released in Jan 2014 (the later Origin tie-in patch did not affect the game files), so that's coming up on five years ago now.

The arguably better approach, for one serious about still making this game work, would be to find out why the saves are unsuccessful and try to fix whatever is causing the issue whether it be hardware, added content, or something wrong with the ongoing game save itself.

No matter how much RAM your computer has, TS3 can only use ~3.7 GB at a time before it gets unstable and prone to crashing. Even a temporary memory spike into the danger zone can cause an Error 12 or corrupt the game data so that saving properly becomes impossible. Large worlds use more memory than small ones, long-running saves use more memory than new ones, and more expansion packs add to the overhead no matter how you're playing. TS3 also has memory leak issues, meaning it takes more and more RAM as the play session goes on. So maybe your ongoing save demands too much RAM for you to play for very long before saving properly becomes impossible.

If you're interested in getting help with this particular save, people here can offer it, but some details would help. What world are you playing in, for how long, which packs do you have installed, do you use mods, etc.? If you have a strong graphics card, have you taken steps to limit your in-game frame rates? TS3's fps limiter doesn't work on its own.

I’ll argue other approaches than using ‘saving as’ are better per se, because I believe that tip is quite factual: save as and number your files (and when you’ve played for hours and hours in a row it’s wise to restart every now and then?). Not when it’s too late though probably. I always start a new game (saving my sims to the bin and place them into a new save) when a save gets corrupted because I’m just not skilled enough to track down problems, I wouldn’t know where to begin and I wouldn’t have the patience either I’m afraid ;) Another tip from me: be selective with the amount of mods and CC you use. The game accepts them to a certain point, but then starts to behave like a body that will try to get rid of xenobiotics, it becomes weak and sick.

Sometimes you can recover the last save (not to the point of the hang up, but to the last save). Using "save as" as everyone has mentioned is key to having a good backup when the hang up on the save happens.

What you can do to revert back to the last good save is to merely move out the save if it doesn't load and delete .backup off the end of the file name in the save folder and see if that will load back to the last successful save point. If it loads, immediately use "save as" and give your save a slightly different name than it had before. Just using "save as" should help clean up your saves a bit and help you play them longer. (Though of course I recommend NRaas Overwatch to really clean up your files and give your games more longevity.)

If the backup retrieval does not work for you, you can always open a copy of the same world you had been playing (not the old save, but a new game start). Then save that new world save and exit the game. Copy over the .nhd file from the old save you had been playing before into the new world save you just created. Now, load the game and choose that new world save. Hopefully, you will find the sims and world as you had preserved them in your last successful save prior to the hang up.

Good luck!

The part that caught my eye was "having over 10 tabs open with 2 livestreams going". It may very well play while this is going on, doesn't mean it's gonna be happy while trying to save. Just sayin'... ;)

"Dawnmccarthy;c-16812549" wrote:
Big world. 16GB Ram. 1TB hard drive. Good enough PC to play sims 3 with almost no lag whilest having over 10 tabs open with 2 livestreams going, so the PC isn't the problem.

I too play a big world and have 16 GB RAM and lots of drive space, but I can still get the Error 12 because Sims 3 is a 32-bit game and when it hits 3,5 - 3,7 GB RAM usage the came can't use more RAM to save correctly.

I recommend shorter game sessions and that you keep an eye on the game's RAM usage. If you have played that world for a long time, the save file itself maybe have become bloated with SNAP files (.png images that are created everytime you have a new sim in the household, everytime you have used CAS to change a sim's appearance, and so on). You can use Kuree's Save Cleaner to delete the SNAP files, so that the size of the save will shrink. Use version 2.2 for earlier Windows, and version 1 if you have Windows 10.

The last time I had Error 12 I checked the size of the save file, and it was over 800 MB! I used Save Cleaner and the save shrank down to ~300 MB, a 0,5 GB difference! :open_mouth: The next time I played it took a couple of minutes for the game to generate the new sim-portraits, and I could save it with no problems. :smile:

Puzzlezaddict also had some good tips.

Good luck! :smiley:

"Odonata68;c-16813280" wrote:
The part that caught my eye was "having over 10 tabs open with 2 livestreams going". It may very well play while this is going on, doesn't mean it's gonna be happy while trying to save. Just sayin'... ;)

With 16 or more GB RAM it's usually no problem to use other RAM-heavy programs, as long as you have 4 GB free for Sims 3 to use. :smile: That's why I recommend having at least 6 GB RAM for Sims 3, so there's space for Windows and a browser (plus the smaller programs that are always running in the background).