Exception Error on Read Access - Do you wish to debug

Hi,

  I have recently installed the Sims 3 on my macbook pro and the Ambitions expantion pack. It took me the best part of 2 days because of problems downloading the relevant patches. Whether that is a Mac or EA issue is not really relevant. 

  So after all the fuss I got it running and have been playing with pretty much no issuses at all, untill last night (after only one day of it being installed). When I tried to launch the game it came up with the following error;

     "Exception Raised - Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x0000008 at address 0x1003c302. Do you wish to debug"

  The game then crashes regardless of whether I selected Yes or No. You may want to note here that during this launch and the message I was not connected to the internet. As soon as I connected my mac to the internet the game launched without any issues and no error message. Thats a good thing right? Not when I can not be connected to the internet most of the time!

  Can aybody solve this problem for me please? I don't want to be uninstalling and reinstalling everytime the game decides to have a hissyfit!!

Thanks in advance

Chris