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Sims UC crashing, here's what I tried so far
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#62
09-02-2018
I've been seeing similar results to yours, I think. Been playing for several hours now on a GeForce 1060, noCD exe, 4gb version. Sometimes I get pink flashies, but most of the time I don't. They have been banished by toggling texture quality high/med/high. Very rarely do I get massive pink soup. Annoying, but the game is playable and enjoyable.
Remind me, can I have two graphics cards? Could I stick an old 9xx in here and use it for the game without removing my 1060? If I found one on ebay or something for cheap.
edit: I have not been removing the groups cache except when the game crashes and it has only crashed after I added new cc which is what it usually does after new cc if I don't delete caches. Yay, mostly stable! I can post my groups cache size tomorrow.
Remind me, can I have two graphics cards? Could I stick an old 9xx in here and use it for the game without removing my 1060? If I found one on ebay or something for cheap.
edit: I have not been removing the groups cache except when the game crashes and it has only crashed after I added new cc which is what it usually does after new cc if I don't delete caches. Yay, mostly stable! I can post my groups cache size tomorrow.
#63
10-02-2018
After about a week of not deleting, the groups.cahse size is 724 KB (741,376 bytes).
The game is still running well. I left it "on" for 3 days out of fear shutting down would break it again, but I've exited and reloaded a couple of times now and all is still well. I do still have minimal pink flashing, but it's easily banished and I haven't had to shut down the game to clear it.
@CatOfEvilGenius I'd been hesitant to even gripe about CC since I duplicated the issues in a vanilla game, but adding and removing CC and probably the caches is what made my game crashier than it had ever been. I'd already pared my CC down as much as much as I could stand (<2GB) since the game was NEVER stable (on a new Win 10 install), and I haven't added any since I've been posting here and trying more things. I'd been swapping some hair defaults and so deleted the thumbnails, and that literally broke the game. I crashed 6 times trying to get past the main menu and then finally stuck the thumbnail packages back it. That got me in, but left me where I was when I first posted.
When I first read @Epi7's post about the caches and found that the groups.cache is not in the install directory (so, probably "custom" to the player/install), I went looking and found this post from MaxoidTom: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=...ost520698. It makes sense that adding and removing content could break/corrupt this.
So after several days of pretty good stability with a non-corrupt groups.cache, I thought I might be able to add CC and use the empty file Epi7 posted a link to. No dice. I stuck some hair defaults back in and replaced my groups.cache with the empty groups.cache. Got into the game, loaded a lot and hit almost complete pink soup. Exited to the neighborhood and crashed. I don't think the hair files are the issue - they're just re-textures of the Maxis hairs and they were working fine before I pulled them in an effort reduce the pink flashing.
I'd followed the instructions in the link posted to the empty file and marked the groups.cache read only. I was curious about this since it's a player-specific registry of sorts and being properly written-to seems to be what has fixed my game. Sooo, I trashed the read-only file (just to be safe) and re-installed the empty file but did NOT mark it read only. I'm playing now with my re-installed hair defaults working just fine. To me, this is a step forward. When trying to generate my own groups.cache file I was getting 2-3 crashes before getting a "good" save and shut down, and that was without mucking with CC. The empty cache NOT marked read-only got me straight onto a lot on the first attempt even after adding in more CC.
Because I now suspect whatever goes in the groups.cache actually IS important to stability, I went ahead and did my usual save on lot/exit to neighborhood/successfully quit game. The groups.cache time stamp was updated and the formerly empty file is now 632 KB (647,168 bytes). That's roughly what it is every time I generate it and get a successful shut down - the size creeps up each time I close the game. I've watched the timestamp update within seconds of the TS2 window disappearing, so I am almost certain it's "finalized" at the very end of shutdown (but only a successful one).
I re-launched and played a bit and now have TS2 running the background. So far, no crashing and no pink and new CC is working!
Edit: Probably not useful to fixing games, but a point of curiosity ... I wonder what everyone's experience with the caches has been over the course of running new OSs?
For me, I'd never even heard of the cache files until shortly after install on a 32-bit Win 7 machine when I had to figure out why I could see the game hanging out in processes but not actually get it to launch. I played for YEARS on XP and never had to delete the files, even with the gradual addition of packs/expansions which typically broke everything else. In Win 7, deleting the files ALWAYS worked and deleting them made no noticeable difference other than allowing the game to launch. Now Win 10 requires occasional deletion as well but somehow breaks something else. I only used Vista for a day before downgrading and skipped over 8 completely, so I never tried TS2 on those OSs.
The game is still running well. I left it "on" for 3 days out of fear shutting down would break it again, but I've exited and reloaded a couple of times now and all is still well. I do still have minimal pink flashing, but it's easily banished and I haven't had to shut down the game to clear it.
@CatOfEvilGenius I'd been hesitant to even gripe about CC since I duplicated the issues in a vanilla game, but adding and removing CC and probably the caches is what made my game crashier than it had ever been. I'd already pared my CC down as much as much as I could stand (<2GB) since the game was NEVER stable (on a new Win 10 install), and I haven't added any since I've been posting here and trying more things. I'd been swapping some hair defaults and so deleted the thumbnails, and that literally broke the game. I crashed 6 times trying to get past the main menu and then finally stuck the thumbnail packages back it. That got me in, but left me where I was when I first posted.
When I first read @Epi7's post about the caches and found that the groups.cache is not in the install directory (so, probably "custom" to the player/install), I went looking and found this post from MaxoidTom: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=...ost520698. It makes sense that adding and removing content could break/corrupt this.
So after several days of pretty good stability with a non-corrupt groups.cache, I thought I might be able to add CC and use the empty file Epi7 posted a link to. No dice. I stuck some hair defaults back in and replaced my groups.cache with the empty groups.cache. Got into the game, loaded a lot and hit almost complete pink soup. Exited to the neighborhood and crashed. I don't think the hair files are the issue - they're just re-textures of the Maxis hairs and they were working fine before I pulled them in an effort reduce the pink flashing.
I'd followed the instructions in the link posted to the empty file and marked the groups.cache read only. I was curious about this since it's a player-specific registry of sorts and being properly written-to seems to be what has fixed my game. Sooo, I trashed the read-only file (just to be safe) and re-installed the empty file but did NOT mark it read only. I'm playing now with my re-installed hair defaults working just fine. To me, this is a step forward. When trying to generate my own groups.cache file I was getting 2-3 crashes before getting a "good" save and shut down, and that was without mucking with CC. The empty cache NOT marked read-only got me straight onto a lot on the first attempt even after adding in more CC.
Because I now suspect whatever goes in the groups.cache actually IS important to stability, I went ahead and did my usual save on lot/exit to neighborhood/successfully quit game. The groups.cache time stamp was updated and the formerly empty file is now 632 KB (647,168 bytes). That's roughly what it is every time I generate it and get a successful shut down - the size creeps up each time I close the game. I've watched the timestamp update within seconds of the TS2 window disappearing, so I am almost certain it's "finalized" at the very end of shutdown (but only a successful one).
I re-launched and played a bit and now have TS2 running the background. So far, no crashing and no pink and new CC is working!
Edit: Probably not useful to fixing games, but a point of curiosity ... I wonder what everyone's experience with the caches has been over the course of running new OSs?
For me, I'd never even heard of the cache files until shortly after install on a 32-bit Win 7 machine when I had to figure out why I could see the game hanging out in processes but not actually get it to launch. I played for YEARS on XP and never had to delete the files, even with the gradual addition of packs/expansions which typically broke everything else. In Win 7, deleting the files ALWAYS worked and deleting them made no noticeable difference other than allowing the game to launch. Now Win 10 requires occasional deletion as well but somehow breaks something else. I only used Vista for a day before downgrading and skipped over 8 completely, so I never tried TS2 on those OSs.
(This post was last modified: 10-02-2018 01:46 PM by SomeRandoChick.)
#64
10-02-2018
@SomeRandoChick - just saw your post, I think we may have the same issue, 'good' cc breaking the game, will try your suggestions...
---------------
Yesterday, game was working mostly fine, playable for over four hours with only minimal pink flashies, no crashes that I recall.
I had some cc in the game yesterday. Mods, community time, a few objects, not many. Toggling texture setting high/med/high
would clear up the flashies.
Today, something changed, massive pink soup, frequent crashes. Can't clear it by toggling texture high/med/high.
Keep having to clear caches but keep crashing anyway, most times I play. I did add more cc objects but all ones I had played with for years.
I also switched today from playing the Goth house to playing the Lothario house (smaller with only one sim!).
I will try disabling cc and see if it was all the cc that did it. However, it is still much less cc than I had years ago
on a less powerful machine with an older graphics card.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting find. In an effort to get rid of the massive pink soup, I changed my nvidia panel setting.
Was using the one that says performance/medium/quality, had it set to medium. Instead, I went to the 3d settings you can
configure per program and tried to set some custom ones for UC noCD. I noticed one that said something about "turn off
if objects are shimmering" and thought that sounds like pink soup. With it off, the pink soup is now all white! Not an improvement
but I do wonder if that's related to the white screen in windowed mode bug people see on MTS. I also turned off something
else that said "turn off for older games", threading optimizations. UC was made to not use multiple cores, right? So why
have the card try to do that. I'll see what else I can fiddle with in NVidia Settings.
![[Image: 23vjgo3.png]](http://i64.tinypic.com/23vjgo3.png)
Another interesting thought. The nvidia card is smoothing edges on top of what the game is already doing! Even when smooth edges
is at the lowest setting in the game, it can still look nice and smooth because nvidia is doing its own smoothing (antialiasing).
There are many antialiasing options in nvidia panel to mess with. I noticed when I had the performance/medium/quality thing set to
medium, I was getting nvidia's lovely smoothing but when I changed to custom 3d settings per program (before I changed any of them),
I was not getting that nice smoothing. Having the card do antialiasing on top of what the game requests it do probably takes the card's
resources so turning some of that off might help?
Lastly, when I had GPU usage monitoring turned on one time, played the game and it crashed, I did notice graphics card usage was
nowhere near maximum. Not even close to using the 6gb of graphics memory I have, yet it acts like it doesn't have enough memory
for its textures. *sigh*
------------------------
edit: So it's the next day. I clear all caches, all thumbnails, remember that I forgot the .cheats file I need for Community time,
put that back in, start up the game again, no pink soup. Play the Caliente lot, no pink at all. Go back to Lothario, no pink.
Play for a bit, exit. Restart game, massive pink soup. What the heck? Toggle high/med/high, pink soup goes away.
Take Don Lothario grocery shopping, pink soup again. I get pink soup much more on community lots although yesterday
I got it on Don's home lot when visitors came for a party. I don't know if something is getting corrupted, the game thinks
it's out of memory when it has tons of memory, the game just breaks because EA, new graphics card/old game, all of the above?
Was able to play today with some pink on community lots but did not crash after I cleared caches. So confused.
Haven't tried dxwnd yet.
---------------
Yesterday, game was working mostly fine, playable for over four hours with only minimal pink flashies, no crashes that I recall.
I had some cc in the game yesterday. Mods, community time, a few objects, not many. Toggling texture setting high/med/high
would clear up the flashies.
Today, something changed, massive pink soup, frequent crashes. Can't clear it by toggling texture high/med/high.
Keep having to clear caches but keep crashing anyway, most times I play. I did add more cc objects but all ones I had played with for years.
I also switched today from playing the Goth house to playing the Lothario house (smaller with only one sim!).
I will try disabling cc and see if it was all the cc that did it. However, it is still much less cc than I had years ago
on a less powerful machine with an older graphics card.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting find. In an effort to get rid of the massive pink soup, I changed my nvidia panel setting.
Was using the one that says performance/medium/quality, had it set to medium. Instead, I went to the 3d settings you can
configure per program and tried to set some custom ones for UC noCD. I noticed one that said something about "turn off
if objects are shimmering" and thought that sounds like pink soup. With it off, the pink soup is now all white! Not an improvement
but I do wonder if that's related to the white screen in windowed mode bug people see on MTS. I also turned off something
else that said "turn off for older games", threading optimizations. UC was made to not use multiple cores, right? So why
have the card try to do that. I'll see what else I can fiddle with in NVidia Settings.
Another interesting thought. The nvidia card is smoothing edges on top of what the game is already doing! Even when smooth edges
is at the lowest setting in the game, it can still look nice and smooth because nvidia is doing its own smoothing (antialiasing).
There are many antialiasing options in nvidia panel to mess with. I noticed when I had the performance/medium/quality thing set to
medium, I was getting nvidia's lovely smoothing but when I changed to custom 3d settings per program (before I changed any of them),
I was not getting that nice smoothing. Having the card do antialiasing on top of what the game requests it do probably takes the card's
resources so turning some of that off might help?
Lastly, when I had GPU usage monitoring turned on one time, played the game and it crashed, I did notice graphics card usage was
nowhere near maximum. Not even close to using the 6gb of graphics memory I have, yet it acts like it doesn't have enough memory
for its textures. *sigh*
------------------------
edit: So it's the next day. I clear all caches, all thumbnails, remember that I forgot the .cheats file I need for Community time,
put that back in, start up the game again, no pink soup. Play the Caliente lot, no pink at all. Go back to Lothario, no pink.
Play for a bit, exit. Restart game, massive pink soup. What the heck? Toggle high/med/high, pink soup goes away.
Take Don Lothario grocery shopping, pink soup again. I get pink soup much more on community lots although yesterday
I got it on Don's home lot when visitors came for a party. I don't know if something is getting corrupted, the game thinks
it's out of memory when it has tons of memory, the game just breaks because EA, new graphics card/old game, all of the above?
Was able to play today with some pink on community lots but did not crash after I cleared caches. So confused.
Haven't tried dxwnd yet.
(This post was last modified: 10-02-2018 10:46 PM by CatOfEvilGeniu.)
#65
10-02-2018
1. I Don't know how to put my configuration log text help
2. Running Sims 2 Double Deluxe nightlife and celebration stuff pack on a Windows 10 with the 1709 update, using a compaq laptop
3. I've just bought this game for like 3$ and downloaded it, the first time I've tried to create a family it would crash. This now an issue every time I try to create a family. Also some nightlife house furniture are red but don't "glow" or "throb," like others. Usually the furniture is white. I have uninstalled the entire thing, and even reset my computer. I have WinRar and the Sims2Pack Clean Installer for CC which I don't download anymore because it makes everything crash faster.
I've also tried the compatibility thing with ALL of the other previous Windows versions, yet I can't seem to get any of them to work on CAS. I have also been using the administrator mode.
2. Running Sims 2 Double Deluxe nightlife and celebration stuff pack on a Windows 10 with the 1709 update, using a compaq laptop
3. I've just bought this game for like 3$ and downloaded it, the first time I've tried to create a family it would crash. This now an issue every time I try to create a family. Also some nightlife house furniture are red but don't "glow" or "throb," like others. Usually the furniture is white. I have uninstalled the entire thing, and even reset my computer. I have WinRar and the Sims2Pack Clean Installer for CC which I don't download anymore because it makes everything crash faster.
I've also tried the compatibility thing with ALL of the other previous Windows versions, yet I can't seem to get any of them to work on CAS. I have also been using the administrator mode.
#66
10-02-2018
@JosephineSIMS Read the line numbered '1.' in the little block titled "Before you post requesting help" that is right above the field where you type your message. That explains everything you need to know.
#67
10-02-2018
@JosephineSIMS - You may want to start a new thread. Few folks will find your post at the end of these seven pages.
Did you red stuff look like my picture below? You said yours wasn't throbbing, so it is just red, not pulsing like mine?
--------------------------------------
@gwynne @SomeRandoChick @Epi7 - So here's an exciting new error I haven't seen before, RED soup. Game was working okay. Then I tried having Don walk to CryptONightclub. Crash. Restart. Red soup. Need to experiment more to see if I can get it corrupt or break less quickly... This was with nvidia panel performance/medium/quality set to medium. Toggling textures high/med/high in game did nothing to fix it.
edit: Removed all caches, removed thumbnails (many of which were pink and borked). Put in the zero size cache file, read only, just to see if that helps.
No pink soup in neighborhood, Don's lot seemed fine, tried sending Don to FM in Downtown again. Crash. Didn't even get to the lot, just like with CryptONightClub.
*sigh*
edit again: Restarted game, pink soup in hood. Toggled high/med/high, got rid of soup. Sent Don to Commandgo Emporium in Downtown. He made it down there, spent some time, then someone made hotdogs, they flashed pink, after folks ate, crash.
An idea. Would deleting the six or hoods I don't play take some memory load off the game? I don't think it should have hoods I'm not currently playing in memory, but I think I remember removing hoods sped up load time, years ago. If I use the in-game hood delete feature, can I restore the hoods from zip backups later without breaking anything?
![[Image: 2yvrwo5.png]](http://i65.tinypic.com/2yvrwo5.png)
Did you red stuff look like my picture below? You said yours wasn't throbbing, so it is just red, not pulsing like mine?
--------------------------------------
@gwynne @SomeRandoChick @Epi7 - So here's an exciting new error I haven't seen before, RED soup. Game was working okay. Then I tried having Don walk to CryptONightclub. Crash. Restart. Red soup. Need to experiment more to see if I can get it corrupt or break less quickly... This was with nvidia panel performance/medium/quality set to medium. Toggling textures high/med/high in game did nothing to fix it.
edit: Removed all caches, removed thumbnails (many of which were pink and borked). Put in the zero size cache file, read only, just to see if that helps.
No pink soup in neighborhood, Don's lot seemed fine, tried sending Don to FM in Downtown again. Crash. Didn't even get to the lot, just like with CryptONightClub.
*sigh*
edit again: Restarted game, pink soup in hood. Toggled high/med/high, got rid of soup. Sent Don to Commandgo Emporium in Downtown. He made it down there, spent some time, then someone made hotdogs, they flashed pink, after folks ate, crash.
An idea. Would deleting the six or hoods I don't play take some memory load off the game? I don't think it should have hoods I'm not currently playing in memory, but I think I remember removing hoods sped up load time, years ago. If I use the in-game hood delete feature, can I restore the hoods from zip backups later without breaking anything?
(This post was last modified: 11-02-2018 12:13 AM by CatOfEvilGeniu.)
#68
11-02-2018
@CatOfEvilGeniu @BoilingOil
1. === Machine info ===
OS version: Windows NT 6.0
CPU: 2095.800048Mhz, Name:GenuineIntel, FPU:1, MMX:1
Memory: 1024MB
Free memory: 152MB
User: Josep
Computer: DESKTOP-K105IG3
=== Sound device info ===
Name: Unknown
Driver: Unknown
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): Intel® HD Graphics
Name (database): Intel® HD Graphics <<NOT FOUND IN DATABASE!>>
(Integrated Chipset)
Vendor: Intel
Chipset: Vendor: 8086, Device: 0106, Board: 3672103c, Chipset: 0009
Driver: igdumd32.dll, Version: 9.17.10.4459, GUID: D7B78E66-4246-11CF-E762-7816B7C2C435
Driver version: 4459
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Monitor aspect: 1.773195, 16:9
Screen mode: 1366x768x32BPP,60Hz
Texture memory: 1080MB
HW T&L: Fixed function:1 Programmable:3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Texture stages: 8
AppControlledAA: 1
-If those aren't the correct ones, I looked and I can't seem to find any other?
2. I'm quite new so please bare with me, also I was going to attach a screenshot of my red glowing objects but then the message "The application has crashed. The application will now terminate."
also I'll make a new thread, sorry :-)
1. === Machine info ===
OS version: Windows NT 6.0
CPU: 2095.800048Mhz, Name:GenuineIntel, FPU:1, MMX:1
Memory: 1024MB
Free memory: 152MB
User: Josep
Computer: DESKTOP-K105IG3
=== Sound device info ===
Name: Unknown
Driver: Unknown
=== Graphics device info ===
Number: 0
Name (driver): Intel® HD Graphics
Name (database): Intel® HD Graphics <<NOT FOUND IN DATABASE!>>
(Integrated Chipset)
Vendor: Intel
Chipset: Vendor: 8086, Device: 0106, Board: 3672103c, Chipset: 0009
Driver: igdumd32.dll, Version: 9.17.10.4459, GUID: D7B78E66-4246-11CF-E762-7816B7C2C435
Driver version: 4459
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Monitor aspect: 1.773195, 16:9
Screen mode: 1366x768x32BPP,60Hz
Texture memory: 1080MB
HW T&L: Fixed function:1 Programmable:3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Texture stages: 8
AppControlledAA: 1
-If those aren't the correct ones, I looked and I can't seem to find any other?
2. I'm quite new so please bare with me, also I was going to attach a screenshot of my red glowing objects but then the message "The application has crashed. The application will now terminate."
also I'll make a new thread, sorry :-)
(This post was last modified: 11-02-2018 12:39 AM by JosephineSIMS.)
#69
11-02-2018
Thank you, @JosephineSIMS, for trying. At least that was the right file. You did not quite do it right, though. You did a copy & paste, so we get only a small part of the file.
If you read the line that I referred to earlier, at the end it says Click "full editor" below to attach a text file.
The "Full Editor" that it mentions, is the button at the bottom of this page, which leads you to the page where you can properly ATTACH the file that was needed.
But don't do that here in this thread, but in the new thread you're going to make instead, OK?
If you read the line that I referred to earlier, at the end it says Click "full editor" below to attach a text file.
The "Full Editor" that it mentions, is the button at the bottom of this page, which leads you to the page where you can properly ATTACH the file that was needed.
But don't do that here in this thread, but in the new thread you're going to make instead, OK?
#70
11-02-2018
Cut down my cc from 9gb to 5gb. May pare it further. Hate doing that but if I can't play...
Also took out all neighborhoods except the one I'm currently playing.
That seemed to help, maybe? Did not get pink soup immediately but I did crash just looking at Downtown.
@giveasmile has a game running stable without compatibility mode and without -CPUCount:1 so I'm going to try without those and see if that helps.
I just want Don Lothario to be able to go sing some karaoke downtown and maybe get bitten by a vamp, is that too much to ask?
------------------------
Game stable again. Have just the one neighborhood. 5gb cc. Cleared caches.
Thanks to @giveasmile for pointing out -CPUCount:1 and compatibility mode are not required.
It may be not using them actually helped? Need to test more, only change one thing, but currently too busy playing.
Also took out all neighborhoods except the one I'm currently playing.
That seemed to help, maybe? Did not get pink soup immediately but I did crash just looking at Downtown.
@giveasmile has a game running stable without compatibility mode and without -CPUCount:1 so I'm going to try without those and see if that helps.
I just want Don Lothario to be able to go sing some karaoke downtown and maybe get bitten by a vamp, is that too much to ask?
------------------------
Game stable again. Have just the one neighborhood. 5gb cc. Cleared caches.
Thanks to @giveasmile for pointing out -CPUCount:1 and compatibility mode are not required.
It may be not using them actually helped? Need to test more, only change one thing, but currently too busy playing.
(This post was last modified: 11-02-2018 10:47 PM by CatOfEvilGeniu.)
Before you post requesting help
Information we need
- The
-config-log.txt from the Logs folder in the My Documents\EA\The Sims2\ Click "full editor" below to attach a text file. - Your operating System.
- What the problem actually is - that will be a picture to show the problem (optional), and accompanying text files that turn up (optional), and a detailed description of what happened, and what you expected to happen.
