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puzzlezaddict's avatar
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
6 years ago

Re: The Sims 3 Causing PC Shut Down

@cloudygreyskies  Do you have software from Lavasoft installed, maybe an adblocker?  All the errors in your dxdiag are related to a Lafasoft service, so it's a good idea to update or uninstall and reinstall it, or don't reinstall it if you're not using it anymore.

However, these errors are unlikely to be related to the computer shutdowns.  Those are usually caused by a hardware or critical software error, either a critical event that makes Windows initiate an emergency shutdown (the BlueScreen of Death), or a hardware component not working properly and taking the system down with it.  It's impossible to tell without more information though.

Please open a File Explorer window, click This PC, and search for *.dmp and then *.mdmp (an asterisk followed by the file extension).  I'd like to see at least two or three dump files, if they exist  So please upload any you find from the last few times you've played Sims 3 and your computer has shut down; you can look at the modified dates on the files to see when they were written.  Specifically, right-click on each one, select Copy, right-click on your desktop and select Paste, then zip them together, upload them to a free filesharing site (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), and link them here.

If you don't find any such files, let me know.  It could be that the shutdowns aren't creating any files, which is useful information.  But if you have a cleaner app that deletes temp files, please disable it for now—it's more important to get this info than to keep your hard drive clean.

3 Replies

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    6 years ago

    @cloudygreyskies  Those files are too old to be useful, to be honest.  In case you're curious, they're both access violations by TS3.exe—the game or one of its components tried to execute at a memory address that didn't allow it, and Windows put a stop to it.  This isn't specific enough to troubleshoot without more information; the solution can be anything from repairing or reinstalling the game to not using some poorly-designed custom content item.

    It's probably irrelevant though: the fact that there aren't any newer files likely means that Windows isn't causing the shutdowns, since it would usually write a crash dump first.  (Still, please disable any cleaner app you have running, and look for more dump files going forward.)  Since this makes a hardware issue much more likely, the next step is hardware monitoring.  Download hwinfo from here:

    https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

    You don't need to install anything if you don't want to; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you want.  (If you would like to install, be sure to click the green button, not the orange one.)  Restart your computer, and don't open any other apps.  Launch hwinfo, choose "sensors only," and click the icon that's a sheet of paper with a + sign to start logging.  Save the file to your desktop for easy access later.

    Wait five minutes, then launch Sims 3 and play until you get a shutdown; the log will keep being written until that happens, and the data should be valid up to that point.  When you've restarted your computer, upload the log to a third-party free filehosting site and link it here.  Please leave it in .csv format, or if you use OneDrive to share, please compress it in .zip format instead.

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