Sims2 Suddenly pink flashing game with Windows 10

@CatOfEvilGeniu Yeah, obviously, managing memory means something different. But in my opinion, it should START with being aware of how much memory is available. Which it clearly does not do. And if it can't even do *that* part, then how much faith should we have in whatever else it is supposed to be capable of?

@BoilingOil - I think allowing it to manage memory may be giving correct values for memory available but they are then overridden, either by the seti textureMemory line, which you did remove, or maybe even by something in the executable itself that sets a 32mb limit if it does not get a value from graphics rules sgr. I'm speculating. It would certainly make more sense to do what you said and use the value the driver gives when queried. On the other hand, maybe nvidia drivers were unreliable and gave bad values at the time Sims was written? Maybe they are still not reliable now? I don't know. Graphics drivers are not remotely my area of expertise. I do know on my machine, enabling self management did produce a significant change. I should repeat your test on my machine and report back.

Need to do some work stuff first. Lab assignments don't write themselves, sadly. Darn real world.

[edit] Do we have folks here who do write graphics drivers? If you do, I have soooo many questions! It's been ages since I was in the sims community so I don't remember what all everyone does IRL.

@mortia Hi there! Just letting you know that your case is pretty much identical to mine. I'm sorry that I can't really help you - I can only give you some light what happened with my game after discussing here with Kiri (as you said you've read the thread).

The sad truth is, I wasn't able to save that neighborhood - the amount of flashing was beyond me, and back then I didn't really have any more time to trying to get it work. After couple very busy months I got back in the game and as the neighborhood was still in a sorry state, I decided to start a new one (wasn't too happy to do so, but couldn't help it - the old one was literally unplayable). In the process I also rebuilt very much of my CC. When I originally posted here I had my downloads folder size around 11gb, now it's about 8,5gb (still too much, working on it).

My current hood seems to behave the same as your clean hood does. Mostly it's not flashing in the neighborhood view at all, but in the lot view it still does, sometimes immediately after starting the game and other times after longer gameplay. Saving the game when something flashes occasionally generates those nice pink family portraits (sometimes I get them even if the game isn't flashing, but it might be that there's some minor object flashing somewhere and I just haven't noticed it).

But the main point is - my current neighborhood is still playable. Usually when something starts to flash I save the game (I have read that some people avoid that, but I have tested a lot and haven't noticed any harm done by doing so), exit to the neighborhood and load the lot again. If it's not flashing, good - I will continue playing, though the lot usually will start flashing again at some point if I cheat my way around the flashing like that. If the lot is still flashing after reloading it's probably time to close the game and delete caches and thumbnails, see this to the exact steps I often then repeat.

What I know for sure is that playing on small lots causes less flashing than playing on big ones. What I really doubt at the moment is if the amount of CC affects that much. When I had over 10gb it definitely helped when I took away some, but now I have far less and haven't noticed any further progress when removing content.

I don't keep my hopes up, though. My old neighborhood started flashing after I had played it for a long time, just like yours did. So it's totally possible that some day my current hood is going totally rambo too. But while I'm able to play, I'm trying to enjoy it.

It's been a long week and I have to head to sleep, but I did take some time today to test my problematic game on on old laptop with Windows 8.1 Pro. It took literal hours because the machine is so old, but I had success in getting my game open and free of flashing pink everything! I'd need a much longer playtest on a more powerful machine to be certain but it was very promising. It's a drastic and frankly, annoying solution as I am actually pretty fond of Windows 10 (or I was before this month) but it seems to be an option. I'd like to keep trying over the weekend with some of the tips you all have been posting (I've been following you around from site to site @CatOfEvilGeniu!) to see if I can get the problem solved with my current setup before I go about the process of reinstalling an OS, or maybe I'll look into a virtual machine in earnest if I'm going to have to live in constant fear of each update from here on out breaking my favorite game

@Epi7 I felt your pain while reading your thread and I'm sorry that you had to give up on your old game. It is a bit exhausting for me right now to think of restarting my game when I've put so much into it. Sigh. If I can't get it back it's going to take me a while to want to play again, that's for sure.

Thanks for following up and leaving your advice here, everyone, I really appreciate it so much!

I was just reading about Sims on a VM over at MTS, @maxon and others were discussing it in... a thread about white screens maybe? Several simmers tried with varying results. Can have issues with the VM seeing the real graphics driver was one issue that jumped out. I’ll link if I find that thread again. I’m losing track of all the win 10 problem threads.

Edit. This one discusses virtualizing
http://modthesims.info/t/606068

Hmm, that sounds like it might be more trouble than it's worth then. I would also need to find a much larger drive to allocate space for the VM which is even more bother. I still want to see if I can find a way to playtest my game properly before committing to an older OS, but I think that might end up being my only option. And yes, there are a shocking number of W10 threads popping up everywhere!

Found the MTS thread with discussion of virtual machines mostly in page 2

http://modthesims.info/t/606068

I was browsing the Official Forums today and found this to be interesting:

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussi...ing#latest

It's a bit vague and not something I've seen a lot of, but it seems as though something about this update has the potential to affect the newer games as well. Aside from NVidia, I'm not sure what the common denominator could be.

As for my game, I've been slowly feeding my laptop my CC and doing some playtesting, and it seems to be doing fine on W8. Does anyone know if Microsoft has even acknowledged this issue? What are the chances of there being a fix for Windows 10? If it's low then I will just go ahead and bite down, reinstall all my stuff and return to Windows 8 permanently.

Win 10 update 1709 definitely breaks several games for a non-trivial portion of gamers and Microsoft has even gone so far as to admit this. They say they are working on it. I am not holding my breath. Maybe they'll fix some things for some people in a few weeks/months but I'm assuming Sims fixes, if any, will have to come from the sims community. Have complained to Microsoft and EA and Origin anyway.

@mortia - I'm very happy you got rid of the flashing pink on the older version! Yay! I know it's not ideal, but still pretty great.

Hey all, just wanted to update my status on this issue. I decided to backup my files and do a clean wipe of my drives and a reinstall of Windows 8. I've attached my new DxDiag and config-log, though I'm not on Windows 10 anymore, so that information might not be of any use now. The end result, however, is that my game is completely back to normal. This experience has soured me quite a bit on the prospect of future Windows OS'. Unless they disable this mandatory update garbage, I won't be buying in until the end of the run when there are no more updates left to mess up my stuff.

Thanks to you all who have been tirelessly trying to sort this out for the many players who have been affected, especially @CatOfEvilGeniu, you are so determined! I hope that everyone can get their games performing properly again.

Attached File(s)

  FITZWILLIAM-config-log.txt (Size: 15.19 KB / Downloads: 386)
  DxDiag.txt (Size: 72.39 KB / Downloads: 396)