Cannot change appearance or game freezes completely - The Sims 3 64-bit

@itsdanyale  Your laptop, specifically its graphics chip, is actually under the minimum requirement for 64-bit Sims 3.  That doesn't mean you can't play, of course, only that performance might be less than ideal.

To set a baseline, please try playing in a clean user folder.  Move the entire Sims 3 folder out of Documents > Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, and when you open the launcher, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Don't add anything to it yet; just start a new save and see how it runs.  You don't need to spend any time in CAS; just pick a random premade household, let the game clock run for a while, then try to change a sim's appearance.  Please test in Sunset Valley.

Let me know how the game runs, and if you don't get a crash, copy over your save, but nothing else, to the new folder, and test it too.  Please also list the expansion packs you currently have installed.

@puzzlezaddict you are awesome! Thank you for explaining everything and for the help, that worked!

About the graphics chip, that's unfortunate ☹️ But at least I'm able to play now.

- One thing that I've noticed, when I moved my save and everything, I started to improve a bit of the graphics again. Most of my graphics were set pretty badly, because like I had mentioned before, if I even just clicked on things like "Enable Advanced Rendering", Or if I set my my refletctions to medium, the whole game would instantly crash.  However, I had set my Sims details to the highest possible and that didn't seem to hinder the game from working. But after I set that again, I became unable to go into create mode again, so I think that was the reason! Now I have set the sims details to medium, and it's working fine

- Another weird side effect, once I moved my save and opened, one of my sims became invisible. Literally invisible, he was there, but you could only see the green crystal. His photo icon also disappeared but I could do some actions with him (play things, make meals, sleep, but not other things like calling someone or going to work. Weird!), and his interactions with other sims became limited - example, he could only perform mean actions to other sims. I tried everything, but I could not even erase him. I tried setting all his hunger to zero to hopefully kill him, but he didn't die, just remained thinking about eating. Tried the testingcheats thing so I could delete him, but I could not click him since he was invisible. Trried moving only him out of the household, but the game said you needed an "adult" to go with him, even though he was an adult 😞 I ended up creating a new sim, merging with the household, just to be able to get them both out. It was very odd.

- After that, I played with no problems for an hour and a half, and then the game just suddenly crashed again, but I mean, at least I'm playing somewhat a good amount of time without interruptions, and I'm saving every 20 minutes or so lol. Does this usually happens? The game just crashes?

- I bought the sims 3 base, but it came with the "Late Night" and "High End Stuff". Eventually I was thinking of buying "Generations", "Seasons", "Pets" and the "University" one. Do you think that's a good idea? Do you believe my Mac would be able to handle this? 

Thanks again @puzzlezaddict  :D 

@itsdanyale  That definitely sounds like your sim was corrupted.  Sims can become invisible because their outfit assignment is broken, and in that case all it takes to fix it is forcing them to change outfits, but that doesn't come with missing interactions or the game forgetting that the sim is an adult.

Corrupt or not, sims should never be object-deleted.  This only removes the body, not the sim's data, and that data can and will corrupt the save if it's not removed.  The only way to do that is with a mod, and if you're going to use mods anyway, you might as well use NRaas MasterController's Total Annihilation command to get rid of the sim in the first place.  But you could also use MC to reset the sim, which is more thorough than the resetsim cheat and might have helped in this situation.

If you're not using mods in general but are interested in adding some, I'd suggest MC along with ErrorTrap, Overwatch, and Register, all from NRaas, and all for the overall health of your saves.  These may or may not help you play longer in a given session, depending on why the game is crashing in the first place.  But the mods will almost certainly help your saves last longer overall.  You can find descriptions and download links here:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Sims-3-Common-Game-Fixing-Mods-Hero-Approved/m-p/9838855#M244208

Sims 3 isn't the most stable game, and on your hardware, I'm not surprised you'd be seeing crashes.  I don't think it's entirely avoidable, although as mentioned, the mods may help if some of the crashes are related to processes that the mods could interrupt or fix before they get to the point where the game engine becomes overwhelmed.  The mods won't hurt at least, and they're removable without any ill effects if you decide you don't want to use them anymore.

As for new packs, I would avoid Pets, which is the most demanding expansion by an obvious margin and tends to cause a lot of problems on hardware like yours.  It's bad enough that I've suggested to other players that they simply uninstall Pets and play without it, as they've tried everything else to get the game stable without much success.  So while I don't know for sure that your laptop couldn't run Pets, the likelihood is high enough that I'd say don't bother trying, at least not on this machine.

Seasons is the second-most-demanding expansion, but it doesn't appear to cause any significant issues on low-powered Macs.  If you do run into trouble, you could disable rain, snow, and sleet, which might put a damper on the overall experience but should make the game playable with the pack installed.  And you'd still have access to the other content.  Generations is relatively mild in terms of demands, and University is in between.

My guess would be that you could run all three of these packs, with maybe some adjustments, with some crashing but not too much to make the game enjoyable.  However, I'd suggest adding one at a time, starting with Generations or University, and seeing how things go.  If the crashes are becoming more frequent, don't add the other expansions.

Stuff packs have almost no impact on performance, and you can add as many as you like.

I will also say that World Adventures and Ambitions are excellent packs and have an even lower impact than Generations.  They're worth considering even if Seasons or University doesn't run well.