Yes indeed, Nvidia did tell me that there was an update yesterday when we were looking at updating various drivers. That's when we updated it. But the problem existed many weeks prior to this update done yesterday - so that won't be the source of the issue unfortunately.
On the suggestion of a friend, we've also run a System File Check, and looked at the Windows 7 Event log - nothing wrong found with either. A virus scan likewise has found nothing.
Might have to investigate some Windows update rollbacks to about two months ago, when the Sim3 was still working.
Digging a bit deeper:
A small app called The Sims 3 Crash Log Analyzer shows that "Max memory used - try to reduce memory usage by lowering settings". Which we did: no improvement. Then we set every setting to it's absolute lowest setting: no improvement. Then we went the opposite way, increasing settings to max: no improvement.
We've also deleted caches and removed all custom content: no improvement.
I even resorted to rolling back Windows updates back to, and even some time previous to, a point in time when The Sims 3 was known to be working - still no improvement.
However, I've had some luck in renaming/deleting the Sims folder in My Documents, forcing TS3 to create a new folder. The game has been running for 20 minutes autonomously now.
Any strategies for finding what is causing the problem in there?
Well, your drivers are not from yesterday. They are from march: Driver Date/Size: 3/20/2014 23:02:50, 17755424 bytes
Did you try re-applying those (make sure beta isn't chosen)
