@wilsmith1924 For the store content, repair the game: open your Origin game library, right-click on the Sims 3 icon, and select Repair. Running the Origin reset tool removes a couple of files that are necessary to make store and custom content work, and repairing puts them back.
The most common cause of this kind of issue is a sim spinning into a corrupt outfit at exactly the time the game freezes. It's a bit early for a sim to be leaving for a 3 pm work shift, but that's certainly possible. If you have custom content, try playing without it. You don't have to save your progress; the point is to see whether this helps. An outfit that contains bad cc could cause the problem, although outfits can be corrupt even without cc. (A certain uniform for a female sim in the culinary career always seems to break for me, and I don't use cc.)
If that doesn't help, please let me know whether you use mods, specifically NRaas mods, or would be willing to add a few. A MasterController town reset, or maybe a more targeted one, could help here.
@wilsmith1924 There are certainly non-mod-related ways to try to address this, but it's more of a guessing game to try to figure out what's wrong. If you prefer though, the fastest approach is to evict a bunch of sims and delete their houses and see whether it helps. If not, quit without saving and try different sims and houses, and maybe some community lots. If this helps, try deleting only half of those same lots and see whether the problem is still gone. You can start by using "save as" to rename the save, so your original remains intact while you experiment on a spare copy.
The point of this is to (hopefully) narrow down the source of the problem to one sim or lot. If you can figure out what's causing the freeze, it should be simple enough to fix, whether it's replacing a house or community lot or adjusting a sim's outfit.
If you'd like to try using mods, the relevant ones here are NRaas ErrorTrap, Overwatch, and MasterController. We can't post direct links to mods on this site, but google will know what you're looking for. This is a good guide for installing mods:
https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Installing_Sims_3_Package_Files/Setup_and_Files
Be sure to delete scriptCache.package, inside Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3 any time you add or remove a mod.
Once you've installed these mods, let the game run to around 1:35 pm. Then click on City Hall and select NRaas > MasterController > Town Options > Reset Everything. This command may take a few minutes to run, depending on the speed of your system and how complicated the world is. Then run the game clock forward and see what happens.
By the way, ErrorTrap is chatty and will let you know when it fixes issues or does general cleanup. This is perfectly normal. If you get repeated scripterrors about a particular sim though, that may give you a clue as to what's causing the crashes.
@wilsmith1924 Your iMac likely has more powerful hardware than your laptop, but I doubt the laptop's hardware is too weak to run Late Night at all. Among the many reports of crashing issues, that pack hasn't been definitively implicated; the only one with an obvious recurrent issue is Pets. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that your laptop isn't running the game well. This can be for any number of reasons, for example a cooling issue or a graphics driver that isn't fully compatible with Sims 3.
If you'd like to post the specs of your laptop, and your iMac for comparison, more information is always helpful. What I'd want is everything under About This Mac (click the Apple icon in the upper left corner of your screen) except for the serial number. But a hardware or driver issue isn't something that you or I could fix, or probably even diagnose directly, so it's more about comparing different players' experiences.
Out of curiosity, who exactly said LN was a problem, and how is it a problem? It's possible that some feature of LN was firing at or around 1:42 pm, in which case not having the pack present would prevent the issue. But it would be useful to know which feature that was, and in what context it can cause a crash.
