Game crashes during loading screen after term completed

@kgillis097  The travel transition is delicate and can break easily, often for no apparent reason.  Please start by opening Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3 > CurrentGame and deleting everything inside.  That folder should always be empty unless you're actively playing and have a save loaded, but sometimes it doesn't get cleared when the game crashes.  Please delete the five cache files in the Sims 3 folder as well; these should be deleted regularly anyway, and every time you quit the game while troubleshooting.  For reference, they are:

• CASPartCache.package
• compositorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

Another step that may help is playing with Origin in offline mode, although that only occasionally makes a difference.

If the game crashes during travel again, or something else goes wrong, then the only non-mod workaround is to try to decrease the stress on the game engine as much as possible and hope it works.

• Empty your sims' inventories as much as possible.  A few items is fine; a hundred is not.
• Use "save as" to rename the save, then quit (without saving) immediately before you want to travel.
• Load the game just to the Main Menu.  Turn off memories, the in-game shopping experience, and the hidden object interactive loading screens.
• Lower all the graphics settings to the minimum.  (You can revert to your normal settings after the travel transition.)  Now quit the game again, without loading a save.
• Delete the five cache files in your game folder in Documents, again.
• Empty out everything in FeaturedItems as well.
• Sign into Origin and then put it in offline mode.  Disconnect your computer from the internet—turn off wifi and/or pull the ethernet cord.
• Now launch your game, load the save, and send your sims to the future right away, as soon as the game clock starts moving forward.

If you'd like to try using mods instead, the ones you'd want are ErrorTrap, Overwatch, and Traveler, all from NRaas.  I can't link them here—mod links aren't allowed on this site—but they should be easy to find.

Hi, 

I tried all of these (the Current Game folder was already empty when not playing) and the problem still occurs. Thank you anyway for offering advice. 

@kgillis097  Do the other steps help?  In particular, using NRaas Traveler, ErrorTrap, and Overwatch seems to almost eliminate this particular issue.

I have no idea as I do not know what those are. I ended up starting a new save file so I have no gone back in a while. 

@kgillis097  Those are mods, from NRaas, that help stabilize the game overall, and (in the case of Traveler) the travel transition.  It's fine if you don't want to use them; I was just suggesting they might help fix your then-current situation.

After testing in a new save file, I was able to have one sim complete a full term with no issues. However, when wanting to send a second generation sim in a different save game to university the issues arise. This time it won't let me get through a day, or even through house selection, without crashing unexpectedly. I really want to play with university but there are too many issues for me. I experience some crashes time to time in normal gameplay (rare though) but with university the risk of crashing increases significantly.  

@kgillis097  Does it help if you save, quit, and reload both immediately before and after you send the sim to university?  The travel transition is fragile, as mentioned before, and often needs some help to work properly.  That was the point of the list of steps I posted earlier, and adding the mods I mentioned should help as well.