The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection Won't Sart

I'm assuming this would work. The only problem is this is for Windows 8.1 and I have Windows 8. Is there somewhere that describes how to do basically the same thing but for Windows 8?

yeah I'm getting the problem too. I'm on Windows 8.1. It loads up to the movie screen just fine and then get to the Sims Fun with Pets and it totally locks up. So I'll press my start button to go to Metro to close it out or something and then the game pointer stays on the screen like the game is still on. I'll get task manager going and because the mouse won't switch over I can't get it to end task. The only way I can close windows or anything is to go in to the task bar and right click on icons to tell it to close it and it works for everything but the Sims 2 (but when I right click on sims instead of Sims Fun with Pets it says Mansions and Gardens or something like that). I tell it to close window and then the little hover over screen flashes like its going to bring the game back in to full screen but nothing else happens. And eventually either when I get task manager up or after I've flipped from Metro side to desktop side a part of the left side of my screen goes blue like the background of the load screen for the game while a small portion of the right screen stays as my desktop kind of like I've put everything in to those snap sections. If I have my programs all set on the right side of the screen I can move them around and use them but if they were on the left side when the blue shows up, I can't get to it. The only way I can get the game to shut down is doing the hard shut down of my computer. I was starting to think that maybe the game didn't like my graphics card or something until I saw others having similar issues.

I was really looking forward to playing Sims 2. I played Sims 1 on console, some side story Sims game a few years back and I got Sims 3, but I wanted to see how Sims 2 was cause I heard it was pretty good and I was excited about having all the stuff packs and expansions with the base game for free. But now I'm just thinking about uninstalling it....

Same issue here, I am on Windows 7 64bit Ultimate. Not changing to 32bit Windows, this is 2014 we should all be using 64bit Windows now.

Tried running in Windows XP compatability mode and this didn't work.

Should point out the original The Sims game + expansion pack I bought back in 2005 work fine on this same PC.

Change the compatability mode to Win Vista SP2. That was the solution for me.

Just wait for about 3 minutes then it will continue.

When I used to play Sims 2 (vanilla) on Windows Vista, I used to have issues running it because it clashed with Aero. Has anyone here actually tried disabling Aero to see if that works?

Im actually gonna try that and see if it works.

I finally got it to stop freezing by using crashn4eve716's solution, although I'm not getting my hopes up because I doubt I'll be able to actually play the game. Either way, thank you!

Hi everyone!

I had the same problem - freezing, and stuff... - but

1. I realized that the game was just *über* slow, which lead me to...
2. the answer on pcgamingwiki.com.

I quote:

Games designed before the release of multi-core CPUs may have issues on newer CPUs with multiple cores and Hyperthreading. If The Sims 2 does not progress in loading at startup, try the following:

    Run the game.
    Open Task Manager, and right-click the game's process. Click "Go to details".
    Right-click The Sims 2's process under details and click Set Affinity.
    Untick all CPUs except CPU 0.

This setting is not saved and needs to be repeated after startup whenever necessary. Note that with the Ultimate Collection or any installation with many Stuff and Expansion packs, the initial loading screen will always take some time due to the amount of content included. 

And it worked for me :-) even if it's annoying to run through the whole process everytime.

Hope this will help you!

Under windows 8.1, i ran the compatibility troubleshooter, and it adjusted the game to run windows vista service pack 2, and it worked. It took a little bit to get past the title screen but the game eventually worked.