Sims UC crashing, here's what I tried so far

@Epi7 - OMG your fix worked with the noCD exe with a 4gb patch! NO CRASH! Poor Nina Caliente stayed at Commandgo for over two days with NO CRASH! I could hug you! Earlier, I tried your fix with the Origin exe, did not help, but it worked a treat with the noCD exe patched to use 4gb of memory.

This works for me, right now (further testing needed to confirm this was not a one time fluke)

* noCD exe instead of Origin exe
* used 4gb patch, not sure yet if this is necessary, have not test noCD without 4gb yet
* Epi7's idea to let the driver manage its own memory (requires a change in the sgr)
* I did do a manual uninstall and clean reinstall of the NVidia driver earlier, I suspect this helped

[edit] There were two flashy pink puddles when it rained but I so don't care right now. It didn't crash. And there was a wee bit of lag when witches showed up and made stuff sparkle. Don't care. This is the most progress I've made in days. No crash! OMG. Squee!

OMG OMG OMG I am so happy right now. Will test more tomorrow after sleep. Thank you Epi7! And thank you everyone else who has been working on this, you all have kept my spirits up.

[edit2] This was all in 800x600 with no cc so maybe squeeing is premature but squee!

[edit3] @TofuMom @tedstrad @mortia @giveasmile @gwynne - the above is what worked for me, mabye it will help you? Key thing may be using the noCD exe instead of Origin's exe and Epi7's idea, change the sgr to allow the driver to manage its own memory (see link above) tired need sleep losing coherency squee zzzz

@alljoj @pixelchixel @MsReid113 - maybe Epi7’s sgr change can help? It worked for me but only with the noCD exe not with the Origin exe

Game works with noCD exe. See previous post. It is at 800x600, antialiasing turned off, no cc. Will try bigger, smoother, and with cc tomorrow.

I will keep trying with the Origin UC. It always worked better than the noCD before. I suspect the 1709 full screen issue is affecting it. I play in windowed mode but it starts up Origin. If I start the game from Origin, not desktop shortcut, it is full screen. So maybe I need -w on Origin too, not just on the Sims2EP9 exe? Maybe I need to disable Windows game mode full screen optimization while in Origin? I think @gwynne mentioned this earlier? Would that, combined with Epi7’s sgr change, and the earlier clean install of drivers, be enough to unbork texture memory for the Origin exe? Will try tomorrow.

@CatOfEvilGeniu - Glad to hear some of my miserable trials has helped you to get your game not crash on the first minute.

Apologies for not replying properly earlier, I had to gather my thoughts as it has been a while since I looked into this. I really doubt that your game will be completely crash free with my fix - I know my game isn't. But I had already done the change in my sgr long before Windows updated, and while I noticed that my game started to crash more often, it wasn't that bad at any point. So maybe my sgr was helping me. However, I have some further ideas on my mind about the crashes.

- At some point in this thread you asked if the Data Execution Prevention step helps with the game crashing. For whatever reason it did help in my case, although I have no idea why, because it is completely off by default and now we are turning it on and excluding UC from it. I don't see the logic in that, but my game has crashed less since I redid the fix a while ago (I had done it in my older system, but not with the current one).

- Sometimes when the game crashes I find that the groups.cache file has not been generated which would suggest that for whatever reason the game has failed to create the cache file. So I wondered if that had to do something with crashes. I've started to not delete the cache files on every start up, if and only if the game has managed to create both caches properly (accessory.cache and groups.cache). As far as I can tell it has helped me with the crashes at least some. Of course I have to delete them from time to time as my game doesn't open at all when they get corrupted, but my current advice is not to remove them before playing if both caches are present and not preventing game to start.

- My experience with the 4gb patch is that before the patch (for many years) I had a habit of saving every time I needed to do something that would cause the game to load (going to community lots, buying clothes, changing appearance, etc.) because it would often crash on those situations. I believe those crashes are part of the game being a very buggy EA game. The crashes stopped immediately after I started using the 4gb patch, but after reading your posts I realized that patching also probably introduced the pink flashing. Maybe the patch is only partially capable of solving some of the memory issues with the game but still parts of the game code fails to work properly when the memory usage hits too high, thus giving us loads of pink.

- There are still quite a few booleans I haven't tested in the Graphics Rules.sgr and it is a positive note that the one which helped you was related to memory allocation. It helps to narrow down the culprit.

- I also boot my computer between every start. I feel that it helps a bit, but who knows. Might be just luck that the game runs better after restart.

//Oh and I forgot to mention very simple little thing that I hope everyone does already, so I'm not sure if it even is worth mentioning. But as it's possible that this thread is read by someone who doesn't know about it - it's always good on every start to open CAS before loading an occupied lot. It just loads some things that otherwise get loaded at some other point, and at least for me it helps to dodge some of those buggy EA crashes. (And rolling a dice couple times at the same time also kills the firstborn effect - but that's another thing.)

//Aaand another thing I forgot to mention. I do delete my thumbnails often, but sometimes when I delete them and start the game everything is flashing pink. What I do: close the game, check that both caches are around, restart my computer and start the game again without deleting anything this time. Surprisingly most of the time my game will work just fine then. But this routine has come through trial and error and doesn't really have any technical background for it.

(Edited once more just to correct some of the misspellings. This is what happens when you write a wall of text with foreign language while being very tired.)

@Epi7 - Thank you very much for sharing that info. I will try these suggestions and see what helps. I will definitely pay closer attention to what's going on with the cache files and thumbnails! And will also try the CAS open thingie later. I'm thinking that the pink flashing is not enough graphics/texture memory, crashes can be not enough memory in general, not necessarily always graphics memory. I think the 4gb patch affects regular memory the game can use, the sgr file affects how much graphics memory the game can use, and both are important. Someone correct me if the 4gb patch does something else. Kiri was saying somewhere, video maybe, that we want to maximize how much memory we give the game while minimizing how much memory it will use. I think a combo of things we have tried helped some with both (sgr, 4gb, clean install of driver, reboot - makes more available, then turning down graphics setting makes the game use less).

@gwynne - @BoilingOil - please see Epi's post above, more infos, for science!

@CatOfEvilGeniu thanks for the suggestion, but what made you think I had not already?

so here's another thing I tried that did not help me, Data Execution Prevention setting changes
(how to change Data Execution Prevention on Win 10)

I just tried DEP with the Origin UC exe. Tried enabling DEP for everything but Sims 2. Someone else discussed this somewhere, can't remember where. Weird because Sims 2 is usually NOT DEP'd anyway. DEP is usually set to 'essential only' and Sims is not essential so not DEP'd. Anyhoo, that made Sims 2 crash earlier and harder, no error message, just poof, no more Sims window. Sims 2 was not DEP'd before, still not DEP'd now. Origin is 64 bit so always DEP'd on 64 bit Windows. So maybe something that Sims 2 uses got DEP'd that wasn't DEP'd before because it is not essential? And DEP'ing that whatever broke it? So now Sims 2 breaks? So I went and changed DEP back to 'essential only'. *sigh* For science.

NVidia Settings - tried changing from quality to performance
ran Origin UC patched to 4gb, no apparent change, still crashes after some time on community lot
the unpatched Origin UC is just crashing while loading neighborhood now, not sure why, going to repair it...

will try Balanced nvidia setting next, but not expecing it to help :/



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Balanced nvidia setting seems to help. (Performance setting did not) The Origin UC patched to 4gb, run from the desktop shortcut in compatibility for XP sp2, ran longer before crashing. Nina spent all night at the community lot before the game crashed instead of crashing sometime in the night.

My goal is still to get Origin UC to work so people who don't want to use noCD have a working option. Also, I suspect Origin exe may work better than noCD since it always did before I added the driver manages its own memory change. Maaaaaybe the Origin exe was changed by Origin to do fancy driver management but the noCD exe does actually let the driver manage itself? I have no idea.

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Running Origin UC (without 4gb patch) from a desktop shortcut in compatibility mode for XP sp2 works better than launching it from Origin with the big orange play button.
Desktop launch crashes on community lot, orange button launch won't even load the neighborhood. Both have -w and -CPUCount:1 (can be set in Origin game settings, advanced launch setting) but the desktop one has XP compatibility and the orange button one, I think, does not. Can't set XP compatibility on the Origin exe, it always gets unset. Makes sense since Origin exe is post XP and 64 bit. Was XP 32? Can't recall.

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Haven't run BoilingOil's experiment (not setting texture memory size in sgr) yet, plan to do that tomorrow...

Hopping in here because we're pretty close on graphics cards (I have a 1070), though I'm on a laptop and I have less RAM. My issues have been really similar with a similar progression.

After fixing up the missing resolutions, missing texture memory, and black boxes under sims, all seemed well ... until I tried to travel from lot to lot, exit to neighborhood, load a different neighborhood, quit the game, etc. It was pretty unplayable because I could never get more than about 2 lot loads before crashing.

The worst of the crashing was finally fixed by applying the 4GB patch, but then the pink flashing started. Oddly, I didn't have the pink flashing at all when the game was LESS stable.

I've tried a lot of the same things, but can't optimize through GeForce Experience because it just doesn't recognize TS2.

DEP was a complete no-go for me - game flat out wouldn't run no matter what I did until I changed it back.

Also, the noCD exe is a no-go for me. It randomly gives the directx error but then works when immediately tried again, and it takes 4-5 times longer to load the game and didn't see any "custom" neighborhoods. This is probably going to seem impossible, but I promise I'm not just dumb - it let me add a custom neighborhood but I could not locate any evidence of it after closing the game. I did go looking to see if created a different directory or used another drive, but that was not the case. I only had an N004 and N005 to begin with and neither had been altered when I exited the no-CD run (all time stamps matched the backup I'd made). There were no new neighborhoods created anywhere either - I searched the whole PC to be sure. This thing's only about a month old so there aren't too many places a whole Sims 2 directory could hide. That was too strange for me to even attempt using it again so I went back to the Origin exe. For the noCD, I used an exe uploaded by either Lee or Kiri (can't remember which), so I'm pretty comfortable that it wasn't bad.

I don't think Securom had anything to do with it either. I didn't find any evidence of Securom on my machine and after further reading it seems Origin removed Securom from UC in Nov 2017 and I didn't install until Dec, so I must have missed it altogether.

I thought MAYBE CC was an issue as I'd hauled my downloads folder around for years and used it on two other installs. So, I scrapped it all and started over and kept everything clean, organized, and renamed to remove spaces and special characters. No dice. Tonight I yanked my Sims 2 folder and let the game generate a fresh one. I purposely loaded packed lots to stress the game a bit and on loading the second house the pink flashing was present. Ran a sim to a big community lot for hours and then back home and let it run at triple speed until it crashed. At least I feel better that CC wasn't the issue since this play-through was as vanilla as possible!

One thing I've been curious about when reviewing my config log is why my game only recognizes 1024MB memory when I have a lot more. I've looked at lot of other people's config logs and notice in addition to the 1ishGB listing like I have, some show 2ish or 4ish. I know they're never going to be "right" and the 4GB fix should be overriding it anyway, but I still wonder if it isn't a problem for the game. I can play in nearly empty hoods and on smaller lots and travel to community lots and back for hours without issues. I've even sent a family from a nearly empty test hood on a vacation (lots of traveling between lots) and made it through in one play-through without a crash. It never crashes when it's using less than a GB memory, but once it gets up to 1.3 or 1.4, I know it's only a matter of time. Regular, non-conservative game play gets me there, even without CC, and I can't even make it through a mid-size house build/deco without a crash. I can hardly play a proper neighborhood with multiple families and multiple houses at all. These are things I would like to be able to do.

I just completed a clean install of the most updated graphics driver. I would have tried it sooner, but saw some complaints that updating broke games for some people and a lot of people were reverting, so I stuck with what I had. But, since I still can't keep it running as/is, it's worth a shot.

I've only been on Win10 for about a month, but so far I hate it solely on the basis of this. My game ran better on aging and frequently overheating on-board graphics with Win7!

I'm not gonna bother uploading logs just yet since I still have this updated driver to test and I don't think tweaks are going to fix it anyway. I think I mainly needed to vent somewhere where people were having similar issues and starting a new thread seemed silly since this is clearly not a one-off problem. Super frustrating. We should all be able to chew through a 14 year old game with modern hardware!


Funny that this is my first post. I've been TS2ing since 2004 and have pretty much been lurking in the community all these years ... I guess it took NOT being able to play to get me to sign up and post. Hah!

Hi @SomeRandoChick! Welcome to the Win 10 Broke My Sims Club. Sorry it’s not that fun a club. Thank you greatly for the detailed info. Let’s stubbornly refuse to give up together.

Has anyone reading this thread tried disabling and/or removing Windows Game DVR? Do we know if Windows might foolishly be recording our Sims game play in the background and that’s what’s eating up the texture memory??? I can imagine Win doing that with Origin even if Origin is running an old non-MMO game.

I read something old about disabling Game DVR here [spelling edit]
https://www.howtogeek.com/273180/how-to-...-game-bar/

And DELETING all Game DVR files in a Microsoft article that seems to lack instructions for what to delete and how.
https://windowsreport.com/fall-creators-update-gaming/

I also read today on an overwatch forum that maybe correct info about our graphics device doesn’t become available on Win 10 sometimes. They recommend driver reinstall, then disable/enable NVidia gpu in device manager, then change screen resolution. ALL THREE STEPS needed to update correct device info, they say. Is this only for integrated card/dual card laptops? Can/should I disable my NVidia card when it’s my only graphics card? Would I get the same result as having no driver because that I can handle.

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[edit] Windows Game Bar, a thing I never knew about nor used, might maybe be screwing up fullscreen mode in some games. Could it possibly be messing stuff up in windowed mode as well? Don't know, but I do have Game Bar. :/ Supposedly it now have setting in Settings.

access Windows game bar by clicking: Windows key + G

Microsoft advice about fixing Windows Game Bar after Win 10
https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-gam...t-opening/
and here
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help...windows-10

How to DISABLE AND REMOVE Windows Game Bar, this may be more useful
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disab...ors-update


and a note here on reddit that I saw elsewhere, Microsoft by default now enables Game Bar for some games after 1709,
maybe they do this when Origin starts? haven't checked
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comme...mode_1709/

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Will be trying getting rid of Game DVR later and Game Mode too. I should NOT have to edit the registry nor run PowerShell as admin to turn off features. *fumes*

[edit] Yet another place to get rid of Win 10 1709 'optimization' is Sims2EP2.exe or its shortcut.
Right click, properties, compatibility, check the checkbox that says 'disable fullscreen optimization'
Maybe that only gets used when playing in fullscreen mode but I'm going to test it anyway. *fumes more*

@SomeRandoChick - Forgot to say, you raise a good question about a mismatch between what we know the hardware/driver is and what Sims thinks it is, even when we tell it what stuff is with the graphics rules file. I don't know, needs more looking into...

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@SomeRandoChick - I thought I remembered you posting dxdiag.txt and graphics rules sgr and config log but can't find them. Was I hallucinating that? If you do upload them, I would be glad to take a look because I'm curious about that 1mb thing you noticed.

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more stuff I tried/am trying

* On the shortcuts to my four versions of Sims2EP9.exe, I checked 'disable fullscreen optimization' in the compatibility tab.
result: I don't play in fullscreen, but just in case, thought it couldn't hurt. Didn't seem to help either.
(the four version are Origin UC, Origin UC 4gb patch, noCD, and noCD 4gb patch)

* In Windows Settings, Gaming, turned off DVR. Could not turn off Game Mode because Microsoft removed that toggle. *fumes*
I left Game Bar on but turned off every other 'optimizing' and 'improved game experience' thing I could find.
Then I checked to see if Game Bar thought Sims is a game. It thinks ORIGIN Sims is a game but NOT the noCD Sims. Interesting!
Maybe that explains why noCD is not crashing but Origin UC is?

game bar in Origin Sims (recognized as a game by Windows)
game bar is shown by pressing the Windows key + G and hidden the same way



game bar in noCD Sims (not recognized as a game by Windows, maybe that's why it doesn't crash?)



* I also tried disabling Game Bar in Windows Settings, Gaming, so you could NOT show it by pressing Windows key + G
I wonder if it's still running somewhere, just you can't show it, so it is still borking things in some sneaky way.
result: Disabling Game Bar in Settings did not help. This is probably why some gamers suggest more drastic measures...

* I made a system restore point because I'm going to poke around in the registry. Drastic measures ahead!

* next up, nuke Game Bar, edit the registry, remove stuff in PowerShell, not looking forward to this
results: haven't tried this yet...

* and also turn off Game Mode in the registry
results: haven't tried this yet...

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I saw this less than helpful quote from Microsoft

Microsoft Wrote:If you’re experiencing stuttering on the Fall Creators Update, you need to completely delete the files related to Game DVR. - bold added by me

Do they mean the recorded video files in the video folder for DVR or do they mean uninstall DVR (how???) or what?