I Installed "FreeTime" the day it came out.

I've had occasional crashs here and there playing The Sims over the years- but they're so infrequent I'd have trouble remembering the last time --- that is until I installed "FreeTime"

Now, my game crashes at least two or three times when I play. I usually play for at least 3+ hours straight and have played that way for years and years.

Just to clarify - I've been playing The Sims since way back when the 1st version ever came out. I've also upgraded or bought about 4 or 5 new computers since then and consider myself to know my way around a computer -- i.e. doing my own memory upgrades, etc.

Right now I have a top of the line set-up - there should be no problems! I'm not blaming this at all on my desktop! It's the game!

Having said all that - has anone else experienced similar issues? Is there a patch available?

I've looked on The Sims tech help sight and have found some crashing issues but for some reason I'm on read-only and can't post my own question.

I've been running Freetime for the past couple of days and it seems fine. I haven't noticed any glitches so far and haven't had a crash either. Are you running Windows Vista by any chance?

Well I haven't had any problems but I think that if you have bon voyage and haven't got the patch then you'll have the NPC glich which really messes up your game and your computer because it makes loads of NPC's that really slow down your computer (because it takes loads of memory)

I'm not running Vista - heard that was horrible.

This computer is a Dell w/windows XP - 3.6GHz processor
w/4.0 GB memory. It's about a year old.

I did do the patch for Bon Voyage.
I try to keep up on the patches.

I have a ton of available memory - all I really have on this computer is what it came with & all The Sims 2 games.
loading times are fast!

We have All the other programs we use on our office computer.

I read somewhere that FreeTime doesn't like custom content like the other expansion packs do.
I do have CC (that's half the fun!) as I'm sure almost everyone does.

If that's what it is --- How could EA have developed a Sims game that doesn't work with CC?

I have submitted a ? to EA support - guess we'll see what they say.

I have some CC, just not a whole lot, so I don't think that would be the problem. Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling?

I just had my game crash on me last night. I still can't fix it. I have had no problems with the game at all until last night. I bought and installed the Free Time pack when it came out. I have been working on a Sim I have in College for a couple days. No problems so far. Then last night my Sim graduated and was preparing to move back in to town. Then before it finished loading it crashed. I still can't load the damn town. It crashes every time I try to load it. I haven't tried the other neighborhoods to see if it still crashes, all my work is on this one neighborhood. So I'm really frustrated that I have done all this work since installing Free Time and have no idea how to fix and hopefully recover my hard work. I can't even say for sure it's because of Free Time. But I had no problems, other than an occasional slow down, before this. My plan later on is to uninstall then re-install. I'm crossing my fingers it works!

Sorry to hear that. I know exactly how painful it is to make through university, both in real life and in the game. If you don't want to waste time to get a degree again, there is a CC item called Fruit of Life, you can download it here:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=205632

It basically lets you instantly graduate from university from any major and with whatever honors you want. It says you will need Nightlife as well for it to work. Also be sure to read the creator's instruction before you download it.

I haven't had any crashing, but my game has been a little slow. I think having every expansion and stuff pack is finally catching up to my computer.

Well I tried uninstalling and re-installing Free Time, with no success. It still crashes every time I try to load Pleasantview (which is where all my work was done). I can load other neighborhoods like the new Desiderata Valley. I even was able to load the Pleasantview University, but it still crashed when I tried loading Pleasantview from the college. I can not load Pleasantview at all right now. The next thing I'm going to try is to uninstall and re-install the whole game. Any other ideas? And I would try that cheat you mentioned HunterKiller666, except I would still lose the work I did. I want to try everything I can to recover my Pleasantview. I have started creating the families over in a new neighborhood, but I still want the ones I made in Pleasantview. I loved how things were progressing and how great I made my families. I miss them.

Do you use downloaded custom content? There might be something that you used in pleasentview that isn't compatible with the game.

**UPDATE**

The crashing problem I originally wrote about had nothing to do with my custom content. Maybe it does with other people but not here? My CC works just fine with all of The Sims 2 games + expansions. I didn't lose anything because of the crashing - well, maybe i didn't get 2 save a few times b4 it crashed - but that's it.

I emailed EA Games Tech Support on this issue.

They gave me some (VERY EASY TO FOLLOW) instructions on how to give them a complete list of my computers settings and everything it was doing or not doing.

With the information I sent them they were able to determine that my video card driver really needed to be updated - it was behind a few versions.
I also had to change my "sound accelerator" level - I don't know what that is, or what it does - but mine was set on "FULL" when it needed to be set on "basic".

I followed all of their instructions and haven't had any problems since. If I do I'll know where to go.

I recommend getting in contact with them through the Sims2 website. It was refreshing to deal with people who really wanted to help. Follow their instructions and you should be pleased too. These guys stayed with me (via email) for a few days - until my problem was resolved.

This message was edited by BostonSimAddict on Mar 08 2008.

My game has been crshing too, and it ALWAYS crashes while loading the Aspir house. Does anyone knopw how to fix this?

buggy9, have you tried doing what BostonSimAddict did?

quote Sky115

Do you use downloaded custom content? There might be something that you used in pleasentview that isn't compatible with the game.

Okay, it's been forever I know, but I kept forgetting to give an update. So here it is... I think I figured out why my game was crashing when I tried to load Pleasantview. After I had reinstalled everything and started all new families in Pleasantview, which took days, it crashed on me again. This time the game hadn't shut down completely on its own. And I realized that the last time the neighborhood crashed on me was after the game hadn't shut down correctly. So I have been making sure it shuts down correctly and completely and also copying the files every couple of days so that if it does happen again I won't lose so much work. So far so good. It has not crashed on me since. Not free time's fault after all. Anyway, just wanted to give the update.