You can right click on the short-cut and you should have the option to start it in XP mode (compatibility tab).
BSOD (blue screen of death) are usually hardware related though.
Could you post your Computer's DxDiag?
To gather a DxDiag on your computer, please follow the steps here: http://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-3/HOW-TO-DxDiag-for-Sims-3-PC-Only/td-p/1049584/
So I'd gone ahead and did a clean uinstall of all games and anything associated with them. During reinstall I'm running the launcher and game sucessfully per expansion (and base of course). All is running fine! I'm wondering if custom content could be an issue. If you have a link to how to get to custom content on the pc and then what might be causing issues, please let me know. I find out after all of this that there is indeed some custom content that had been added to our account, but I'm not sure if that would be available for download in-game or only on my kid's computer. Thanks!!
Your computer is pretty low in specs. Graphic chip and cpu both don't have the miminum specs.
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As for custom content: On which account do you have them ? On the computer ? You can get cc if you download stuff from the exchange.
Read all about ith here: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/234888.page
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