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

@SomeRandoChick - well, if we don't remove caches from time to time they are doomed to become corrupted at some point. Excluding read-only caches of course - but if they don't work with 10 series then it's not much help to you. And sorry that I got your card wrong! I think I tried to check it from the DxDiag you attached to this thread, but I probably misread it.

@gwynne - just letting you know that I've got pretty aggressive seasonal flu and it's very likely that I'm not able to run the testes I promised this weekend.

My brains are kind of dizzy at the moment. And my English is probably even more horrible than usual. Sorry.

Hope you feel better, Epi7. I'll actually be out of the country for a week starting tomorrow, so I'm out of the 'poke it' game for a bit. Maybe Origin will push a fix while I'm gone, harhar.

gwynne Wrote:Vanilla install with a series 10 card, original .exe = crashes, usually before you can select a neighborhood (or even earlier). Game unplayable.
Tweak the line in Graphics Rules about managing texture memory (crucial), and probably grab a noCD.exe and apply 4GB patch = crashes cease, but now you have different variants of flashing pink. (Sometimes in hood view, sometimes in lot view, sometimes hood and lot will be fine, then a few minutes into playing the lot, pink, including the sims themselves, who are pink and float around in the 'milkshape' pose.)

@gwynne - At that point, do you have compatibility mode on or off? And do you have -CPUCount:1 used or not used? When I got rid of compatibility and CPU throttling, it made a huge difference. I did both at the same time, sloppy experimental method, so can't say for sure if it was one or both but neither is needed right now, game runs great without them. I can't remember now, I think you did NOT use either of those?

@Epi7 - Take care of yourself and feel better. Cookies. Netflix. Cats. Unless you're allergic, then no cats.

@Epi7 I didn't think anyone mentioned the wrong card! I think I only mentioned my card in my first post which was several pages back and before anyone was thinking the 10 series cards are more problematic than others, so I wanted to throw it out with my latest update as a general "by the way". I hope you feel better soon!

@CatOfEvilGenius I think you might be onto something turning compatibility mode off and removing CPU count - pretty sure those instructions originated with Windows 8/TS2 problems and if they ever worked for Windows 10 at all maybe they just don't apply to the latest Windows 10 update? I'm running smoothly without them today too. Actually, I don't think I ever needed them, they were just something I tried and didn't seem to make things any worse, so I never took them out until today.

I initially had the game running with just Kiri's graphics rules file plus an edit to the texture memory to match my specs, and also the video cards file tweaked to include my card. That was with the Origin exe shortcut and it was equally crashy with or without compatibility mode or CPU count. The game was sort of playable, though generally would crash after more than 2 lot loads which made visiting community lots pointless because even if I could get to the lot, I would crash when traveling back home. I had no pink flashing at all at that point, it was just predictably crashy. I played like that for close to a month before the pink flashing showed up out of nowhere and with it came more crashes.

Dunno if it will help anyone else, but I've found that I have more trouble loading into lots that were saved at nighttime - those lots almost always load into pink soup and sometimes cause crashes trying to eliminate it. I'm now only saving when it's daytime and having much less trouble entering lots - sometimes little bits of pink still pop up during play (particularly right at nightfall), but they're easy to get rid of with toggling graphics settings.

Also, I think I read somewhere that someone was afraid to save while they had pink flashing on a lot - for me, this seems to have no correlation to how the lot will load next time. When toggling settings doesn't banish all the pink, I just save the lot and exit and re-enter and the flashing is gone, so it doesn't seem to hurt to save with pink flashing.

@SomeRandoChick - Interesting that saving at night gives you different results. I'll see if that happens to me or not. I suspect the pink flashing shows up as the game gets played more. We make new sims, our sims have more memories, we maybe make new lots, so the amount of stuff the game has to load gets larger. That takes up more memory. Pink flashing happens when the game thinks it lacks texture memory. I would say non-texture stuff like sim memories and such should not mess with texture memory, but maybe the game is keeping textures in non-texture memory? Something to keep an eye out for - is there more pink soup the more we play? And is there a difference with night saves?

At the moment, the game is running the best I've had it so far. For the last two days I've had no crashes and surprisingly, I haven't had any pink AT ALL. The only thing I've done since the last wave of pink and the last crash is remove compatibility mode and CPU count from the shortcut and deleted accessory.cache and groups.cache as needed when the game stops loading (generally only when installing new CC at this point).

Here's a summary of what I've done and left intact:

Nvidia driver up to date
Graphics rules adapted from Kiri's Nvidia fix with my own texture memory override
Video cards file updated to add my card (GTX 1080)
Using noCD exe - Kiri's "George"
4GB Patch applied
No compatibility mode
No CPU count
Reduced color mode (8-bit) - not sure this is necessary, but I haven't tried turning it off since I'm not having issues now
Override high DPI scaling (let Application choose) - this is personal preference since I play in windowed mode and don't like the game "stretched", not sure it makes any difference to playability
Cache files deleted as needed
accessory.cache not critical as game regenerates from program files
groups.cache - when deleted and not regenerated, game is crashy

I am able to add CC now and am not having any issues (yay!). I was pared down to under 2GB trying to eliminate the pink, but I'm gradually adding things back now that I'm running more stable.

I have had more time to play with the cache files and my experience with groups.cache has stayed consistent. When not present at all, the game often crashes just trying to load or get into a lot. Installing the empty groups.cache file eliminates this, but for me, only when NOT marked "read only". Marking it read only generally gets the game launched, but it still crashes after 1-2 lot loads. My current "SOP" is to install the empty groups.cache, launch the game, load a lot, save, exit to neighborhood, quit game - groups.cache is updated by game and game can now be relaunched and is fully playable. I have only had to delete the cache files when adding in new CC - because the game won't launch at all until I do.

I am still saving during daylight only. I am not sure how critical it is, but because I noticed the missing textures are influenced by lighting (to the extent that moving an object with missing textures around the lot can restore the missing textures), I figure better safe than sorry and it's just becoming a play habit for me.

The caveat here is that I've had brief periods of good play before where I've thought everything was fixed only to have the game deteriorate again. So, I may be saying "all good" now but be back tomorrow with a crashing game (haha). For now though, I am really happy with how the game is running! Of course I'll keep following these threads and update if anything changes for me.

ETA: I mentioned this before, but it seems appropriate to add it to this summary - by the time I downloaded and installed UC from Origin, secuROM had already been removed from the game. I double checked my system but found no evidence of secuROM so I didn't have to mess with that at all. I assume the secuROM removal steps would still apply to those with older installs.

(16-02-2018 11:26 PM)CatOfEvilGeniu Wrote:  @gwynne - At that point, do you have compatibility mode on or off? And do you have -CPUCount:1 used or not used? When I got rid of compatibility and CPU throttling, it made a huge difference. I did both at the same time, sloppy experimental method, so can't say for sure if it was one or both but neither is needed right now, game runs great without them. I can't remember now, I think you did NOT use either of those?

@Epi7 - Take care of yourself and feel better. Cookies. Netflix. Cats. Unless you're allergic, then no cats.

Info may be academic now, but:

I've never been a believer in the 'Compatibility Mode' stuff, simply because I never actually had any problem with the game as I transitioned through Vista/Windows 7/Windows 10. (Or rather: no problems that weren't related to getting the game to talk to newer generation GPUs.) I've always used no-CD exes though, even before UC. I'm not actually sure what problems compatibility mode is supposed to solve.

I haven't futzed around with the core count/multithreading stuff in a long time (five years?), and even then it would have been trying to increase performance, not fix anything.

(And I realize as I type this that in all the installs/tests I've done lately, I'm STILL not sure if the 4GB patch is necessary, have never installed and tweaked in the right order.)

(Speaking of performance, I've downloaded a few heavily-decorated lots lately that can kill my 970/1070 machines if I have the graphics cranked all the way up. On older machines, I remember people used to have setting recommendations for the NVIDIA control panel, something about max pre-rendered frames (and other settings), but I've never been able to find the pages again, it was a long time ago. Maybe if this series 10 thing gets solved, we can get a "NVIDIA optimization" thread going. FWIW, I don't think what I'm describing is related to the overall problems, I just rarely download clutter-heavy lots (one was a giant dorm with lots of water features and lighting fx, i.e., disco lights and stuff), and I was surprised to see the game chugging again, so it reminded me of when (on older hardware) I'd tweak the NVIDIA control panel settings.)

I know this discussion is long dead, but in case someone's reading this with hopes to solve flashing and crashing problems, I have one last thing to say.

After I disappeared from these forums (first I was sick for many weeks and then the real life happened) I literally gave up all hope to fix The Sims 2. Ever.

Well, several weeks ago I had an opportunity to get an extra computer to my household, mainly for server purposes. The components I got with the computer are old but not that bad, it has gtx 960 for example. Anyway, as I don't need to use that computer on a daily basis, I chose to install Win7 to it and give a try with The Sims 2.

And well, everything works. I don't see any signs of pink flashing and the game didn't crash either. So happy end for me. Though I feel really sorry for everyone who can't just install Win7 to another computer (or to another hard drive). I still stand behind my theory (now more than ever) that some kind of wrapper that emulates Win7 interface for Win10 might help, but I don't have personal reasons to search one anymore.

I stumbled upon this tutorial, apparently with the linked program it's possibly possible to get older games to run on Windows 10. I haven't tried it since I'm still on 7 (and will be until this machine literally dies) so I can't say if it works but figured it might be worth trying for those of you who do use W10.