Crashes PC with Stop 0x0000008E error message Been trying to run The Sims 3 on a Dell Dimension GX280 and keep getting BSOD and stop message 0x0000008e (0xC0000005, 0xBGG92217, 0X4849810, 0x00000000) TCPIP.SYS - Address B6692217. base at B6648000, datestamp 485b99ad. PC has Pentium 4 CPU 3.20 GHZ. 3GB RAM NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT Graphics card. Plenty of room on HD and all drivers and other updates bang up to date OS Windows XP Pro. Registry cleaned with CC Cleaner. Machine runs absolutele fine with all other software. On a couple of rare occasions The Sims3 has started up OK and asked for a download - permitted but on both occasions it seemed to do he download but then come up to BSOD after telling me it couldnt find a particular programme - can't remember what that was. Once yesterday the Sims3 ran OK but again ever since has BSODed the PC. Any ideas please on what's wrong?
The game is calling home to EA and is breaking the TCP/IP stack of Windows. Try blocking the game from the internet using the Windows firewall, or disabling the NIC using "Network Connections". Hopefully one of these will stop the game trying to connect in the first place, otherwise it will continue to crash.
Thanks Flameback777, your answer has fixed the problem. I blocked sims3launcher.exe and ts3.exe in the Firewall and now it's working. That's surely not ideal though, is it?
It's great, why do you want the game contacting EA all the time? You can download the patches manually at www.simprograms.com