game hadplayed fine,did update, now crashes

You specs are a bit low, especially your graphic chip.

Your card drivers are also almost 4 years old. You should update those. You have a ATI Radeon HD 4200 and you can go here to download the latest ones: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

You can't unpatch a game. You would need to uninstall the game and patch manually to the level you want.

I'm downloading (hopefully the right one) as we speak, thank you for the link! I wouldn't have known what to look for or where. (I just play with the machines, I don't build or program them!) I'll give a shot and see what happens and get back to you. Thank  you for your help!

drat. Downloaded the driver and installed, but game is still crashing in the same manner.

Are you willing to try a third party tool ? There's a tool called crash log analyzer (just google).

It's not a magic tool that can stop the crashes but it can give an indication to where the error lies. Just copy the errors you get to the clipboard and post them here.

This tool is not supported by EA so you'll be using it at your own risk

found and ran it, and it says I need to upgrade my memory to 4 GB.

But I have 4 GB. Exactly. it says 3.75 here, but if I go look at the information on my computer, it says 4. how would you install 3.75 GB anyway, is that even possible? it also claims I have custom content, but I know for  a fact I don't have anything in here that I did not purchase off the sims3 site, I decided when I got this game I didn't want to deal with buggy conflicting stuff from custom sites. Can't figure why it was running fine until I loaded that latest update...Right now it will let me play an existing game I have on the computer. It runs kind of slow (the lot is big with a lot of stuff on it though) but it won't let me get through a character creation process or build a new lot with an existing character...which just really confuses me. How can I get it to see and utilize the entire 4 GB that I do acutally have?

BTW, I appreciate so much you reading through all this and  your help. I really dread the idea of trying to find all my disks and reinstalling and then having to redownload everything I have ever purchased off the site, yikes!

Here's what the program gave me:

Processor Name: AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 220 Processor
Processor Architecture: AMD64
Graphics Processor: ATI Radeon HD 4200 (256 MiB)
Antiviruses: AVG AntiVirus Free Edition 2014, Norton Internet Security

Games Installed:
Custom Content: Yes (5 found)

[INSUFFICIENT MEMORY] 3/31/2014 6:29:12 AM
OS Version: 6.1.7601
Installed RAM: 3.75 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 511 MiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000000
Crash Address: 0x722273bd "C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.6195_none_d09154e044272b9a\MSVCR80.dll":0x0001:0x000163bd

[INSUFFICIENT MEMORY] 3/31/2014 7:21:38 AM
OS Version: 6.1.7601
Installed RAM: 3.75 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 527 MiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x00000000
Crash Address: 0x722272d7 "C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.6195_none_d09154e044272b9a\MSVCR80.dll":0x0001:0x000162d7

[INSUFFICIENT MEMORY] 3/31/2014 9:18:07 PM
OS Version: 6.1.7601
Installed RAM: 3.75 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 501 MiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x00000000
Crash Address: 0x72224a7f "C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.6195_none_d09154e044272b9a\MSVCR80.dll":0x0001:0x00013a7f

[INSUFFICIENT MEMORY] 4/2/2014 6:11:49 PM
OS Version: 6.1.7601
Installed RAM: 3.75 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 523 MiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x00000000
Crash Address: 0x736372d7 "C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.6195_none_d09154e044272b9a\MSVCR80.dll":0x0001:0x000162d7

[INSUFFICIENT MEMORY] 4/2/2014 6:44:21 PM
OS Version: 6.1.7601
Installed RAM: 3.75 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 510 MiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x00000000
Crash Address: 0x0056dcc5 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe":0x0001:0x0016ccc5

[INSUFFICIENT MEMORY] 4/5/2014 4:29:25 PM
OS Version: 6.1.7601
Installed RAM: 3.75 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 530 MiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x00000000
Crash Address: 0x729e72d7 "C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.6195_none_d09154e044272b9a\MSVCR80.dll":0x0001:0x000162d7

The system uses RAM too. So with only for 4 GB of RAM, it's possible that the game exceeds the memory you have. Don't worry about the 3.75/4 GB, I have no idea what the tool reads exactly

Also the tool also counts store content as cc. It checks the number of files in dcbackup and the mods folder.

Also are you running two antivirus programs at the same time ? If so, they will conflict with each other. You should only have one.

Do you have a laptop or desktop computer ?

It's a desktop computer, and as far as I know I'm only running one antivirus, AVG. There is something that pops up called Vprotect in my task manager, and search conduit, but I think they are search engine protectors and I usually shut them down when i reboot.

If it's a desktop, try adding 4-6 GB of RAM to the machine.

I was just thrown off by the Norten security suite that CLA detected.

You're welcome. I hope it helps.