Troubleshooting Blue Screen of Eternal Frustration- does it have anything to do with Custom Content?

Blue Screen of Eternal Frustration- UPDATE- Those who have helped me, please read.

Hi,

I have just installed the Sims 2 and 5 expansions (University, Nightlife, Pets, Seasons, Freetime). My game keeps going to a blue loading screen with the hourglass. Sometimes this screen is benign, lasting around 10 seconds- 2 minutes. More recently, however, it goes blue right away, and I can't play the game. My father is convinced I have messed up the computer with my CC. I have an ATI 9600 graphics card, and minimal custom content (just pet breeds, clothes, skintones, eyes, hairs, makeup, walls, floors and recolourer- no game objects, hacks, or lots) .The game takes very short to load, as do neighborhoods and lots, but when I get to a family, it commences to turn blue after about two minutes, recently. One thing is, I don't know that I have the latest driver; I am planning on downloading it when I get home from school today. I am also planning on downloading direct x 9.0. My computer's only other programs are internet explorer, ms word, and the other necessties. No other games but the Sims horde. I always had this same blue screen issue with the original Sims 2, when they where in large lots with loads of CC, so I moved the sims to a small lot, and it worked fine. (Also, this was before my ATI 9600)

HERE'S THE SAGA- That was about a month ago. Then, my father reinstalled the game, put in the new card, and it could run for hours, no blue screen at all. This is, however, before the advent of any CC or any expansions. I installed nightlife next, and it was also perfect, with no CC. I then installed the university, added houses (with copious cc), checked out the houses, and it worked fine. Incredibly clear, NO blue screen. Then I got to installed pets- houses still great, and then seasons- still wunderbar. When I got to freetime, I got many custom houses (about 70...oy) and put them in a neighborhood, and the game would blue up after I added a few of them. This was from the neighborhood veiw. So, I deleted them all, and added my bodyshop cc- create a family always worked fine. However, I got the 9.0 x incompatible error, and (after hearing that even people with 9.0 compatible drivers got the error) I reinstalled everything.

Okay, every little detail now is from two days ago and onward.

-Installed Sims 2
-Installed Uni
-Installed NL
-Installed pets
-Installed Seasons
-Installed FT
- Put in ALL CC (at that time, I had about 5000 files in the downloads folder) , including houses
- Create a family worked fine
- Could put in lots
- When visiting lots, the blueness started. Lot size was medium, had CC.
- Deleted all but one lot.
- Visited the one chosen custom lot. Custom items turned to the originals they had been cloned from; I decided to cut my losses and just keep the house- custom walls and floors were still there.
- house was fine, no blue
- I then went to an original community lot (the neighborhood, btw, was Desiderata Valley, the community lot was the park) Zoomed in and out, lot went blue for about 30 seconds
- went to a tiny original game lot, clicked on buy mode to see all the game objects. Was working fine. When I came to my CC objects, the screen would blue up for about five seconds, and then go back to normal and the object would show up fine. I deleted most of my CC objects then and there, from the game, keeping only a few. Screen went blue for five seconds with each object; blueness was predictable.
-I then went and deleted my custom house, not wanting anymore possible trouble.
- Went to create a family to fool around with it; it would get blue intermittenly, but it stooped after the first three minutes
- NEXT DAY, using the clean pack installer, I deleted much of my cc, cutting the size in half.
- Created sim and pet- screen truned blue when combining the families (I first moved in the sim, then combined it with a lone pet) game had to be turned off with ctrl+alt+delete
- went back on, game working fine, combined families, started redoing the house. Used a couple custom objects and custom walls and floors. The screen would turn blue every fifteen minutes or so, but would come back after about 30 sceonds.
-Finally, screen was blue for more than ten minutes, so I shut comp down
- Turned game right back on, tried loading the family with the plant sim in Riverblossom Hills, but, as it was loading the family, it went wonderfully, beautifully blue. I then shut the comp down for good.
- NEXT DAY- went back, redid house over again. The blueness would keep coming back. I saved half the house; that worked.
- Right after saving, the screen went blue.
-Turned game back on, finished house. Multiply this about 2 more times.
- Deleted cigpen. package for the first time. My family now has no picture.
- House was finally done, however, the two or so custom objects (recoulors were doing fine) were flashing blue, so I then went and deleted ALL my custom objects; took no prisoners. So, In this house, there are alot of objects, but all of them are maxis originals or recolors, and some custom walls and floors.
-Got direct x 9.0 error thingy when clicking on game to play
-restarted computer; game turned on and loaded normally and flawlessly.
- Went back on, finally hoping to be able to play with the family- screen went blue one time, for about a minute and a half, and then the game ran for about three more minutes, and finally the blue came back and I shut it down.
- Went back on, changed resolution to 800/600, and did the boolProp useShaders false- went to fam- still blue
- Went back on ,was about to change res again, ....BLUE!!!
- Went back on, tried playing an original family- screen flashed blue three times, with the picture showing up for about 3 seconds, then game worked, sims were simming, could zoom in and out...but I could not click anything; my cursor in the game was effectvely frozen. Don't know if there is any connection. Finally screen turned blue; shut down.
- Gave up.


Now, however, I have 1 sim and 1 pet in the smallest possible lot, and the game is acting up. The house has recolors, custom walls and floors, (I redid the game house in build mode) and the sim has custom eyes, hair, skin, makeup, and clothes. Does this CC have anything to do with the annoying blue screen? It has also come up in game-made families, with no CC at all, and when clicking on an original game object while in buy or build mode. I know that my computer has above and beyond the required system- tons of ram, GB, all that jazz. Btw, I have Windows XP. Basically, what I'm asking is, does this popular 'blue screen' issue (NOT BSOD) have anything to do with CC, or should it go away when I update the driver? Game is also fully patched, cache files get deleted, and I've tried boolProp useShaders false, to no avail. All custom content is from reliable sites, sites nearly everyone had downloaded from. Bodyshop works fine. So, yeah. Frustration. Has there ever been any link with the blue screen to CC? Or is it purely graphics reasons, and what can I do that I have not done? Also, I sometimes get the 'cannot find direct X 9.0 compatible blah blah blah' when starting the game, but when I restart my computer, the game come up fine- albeit it reverts to a blue screen after 2 minutes of playing with a family. This is so odd, my game really should be running fine. I shouldn't have to spend hundreds on a super-graphics card. I really hope I don't have to delete my CC, but please, someone inform me if it's the CC. Ach, are there any known solutions to this problem? Please give a list. OY VEY. (But maybe I'll get lucky and it will work when I update my driver and Direct x, but, there is a possibility my father already did it. If that doesn't fix it, what will?!) Is this ALWAYS a graphics issue? And, should I remove my cc before proceding? Do I need to uninstall? What are the steps? The things (I think) I haven't done are direct x and the latest driver, but is there anything else? Assume my comp has the requirements. I'll post the list of my comp details when I get home later today. In the meantime, any input would be great!

I apologize for constant redundancy. So stressed. :(

edit- I've also disabled norton anti-virus when playing the game. It didn't work.

 

Without knowing your system's specs it's hard to say why this is happening.
Sounds to me when you installed Freetime your PC decided to say enough is enough.
Pets, Seasons and Freetime with all their added graphic effects is hard on a video card.
The shaders that these EP's use are what normally does a weaker card in if it doesn't have power to process all that information thrown at it .
If you could please post your dxdiag of your computer it will help us determine if all this is too much or not.
Go here http://www.simprograms.com/the-sims...o-see-if-your-computer-can-handle-the-sims-3/ and where it says How do I find my system’s information? read the part for what operating system you have and please include that in your reply.

 

Okay, heeeeeeeeeeeeere we go:







Do I need to showyou anything else? Thank you!

 

I'm going to do that right away- but, is my computer strong enough to run the sims 2 and the expansions I have? I don't need more ram?

 

Another GB of ram wouldn't hurt (don't go over 2 GB's as it would be a waste of money) but it will help the computer work a lot better and faster .
I would suggest you go somewhere like http://memoryselector.cnetchannel.com/tigerdirect/ and use their memory configurator to find out how much (desktop) ram your PC supports,what speed it needs to be and how many memory slots your computer has.
IF your motherboard supports it I would suggest you get two sticks of 1GB ram and replace what you have in your computer.
Corsair RAM is about the best going although there are other good brands of memory out there too.

 

Okay, I'm in the process of doing this...but, back to my original question...has there ever been any correlation between Custom content and the blue screen? It seems that the Sims 2 is an exceptionally moody game.

 

Not that I recall and I've played the game since it was released.
I would say the card is starting to show it's age.
It may not be able to handle all these expansions plus any CC you might be using.
When you install your drivers do you do a complete uninstall/reinstall of them and turn your anti-virus off when you do it?

 

Flameback777, here's your thousand words




This is a screenshot from my game. The music still runs in the background, but I have to ctrl=+alt+delete out of the game, because it just remains blue and useless. It also does that turning hourglass thing, which apparently didn't show up in the screen shot. Anyways, the source of my frustration. And, I checked, and I do have the latest driver (catalyst). No dice.

 

Yup, completely blank blue, except for a turning hourglass. The blue screen used to happen in the original game when I was on big lots (and before my new video card). So I moved sims to small lots. However, it now occurs on the smallest of lots. This is really odd, since it seems that my computer has above and beyond the requirements- good video card, with the latest driver. My only downloads are bodyshop related and pets. And aren't many people able to use innordinate amounts of downloads? I have barely over 1 GB.

Just for the sake of research, could I hear some of your theories? Thanks!

 

This just in- I moved the downloads and saved sims folders, so they will not show up in the game. The blue screen still shows up after I've played for about 10 minutes. Really frustrating. Have I mentioned that before?

 

Base game with no cc, along with some cc, has worked fine. Nightlife and uni worked well too, though I never really played it after installing pets, seasons, and freetime. What's really stressing me is that my computer meets the requirements; and, even more than that has, a very strong video card...I have no other games on my computer. Seems to me that the game should just....work.

 

So, here is what has happened since-

I've reinstalled all games, with no cc, and they work fine- I was playing for hours with no blue screen....But there seems to be one problem I haven't encountered before. When I press ctrl+shift+c, instead of bringing up the cheat box, my game takes a snapshot. My computer is windows 2000. I don't have Cursor xp or HP, and the only new games I've installed are the sims games. Any idea on what to do? Is something stealing the shortcut? I really hope I don't have to reinstall again......

One other question- I'm willing to attempt to put cc into my game. I only want bodyshop items- clothes, skintones, eyes, hair- And walls and floors. Is there a certain amount I should introduce to the game at a time? For example, if I have, say, 3000 files, should I put in 100, then close the game, and put in additional stuff in hopes of it running better? To put it short, is it unwise to introduce all your downloads to the game in one single go? And, is there a limit to the amount of downloads I can have at one time? I don't see myself going past 3500 files. My father thinks it was the cc that was causing the fun blue screen, but it seems the game is designed to allow custom content. Based on my diaxdag pictures that I posted, how much do you think my computer can handle?

Please and thank you ​

 

I can tell you this much that custom hairs will be a big drain on your system resources because usually they have more animation than Maxis hair.
The rest of the bodyshop stuff should be ok.
Clothes and makeup should not be a problem.
Walls and floors should be okay.
I can't think of any reason why it would be doing that when you try to bring up the cheat box.

 

Thank you very much for your help. How many hairs do you think are a 'smart' number to have?

As for the cheat box dilemma, I have heard about things like hp health check and cursor xp stealing the shortcut, but I don't have those. I have windows 2000. Do you think there's a possibility that somehow, something is stealing the shortcut? Also, should I introduce my custom content into the game in bits and pieces, or should I just put it all in at once?

.....There always has to be something, doesn't there......Damn cheatbox. Oy!

 

The larger the files the more likely they'll be to cause you problems .
I would go through and pick out all the small files and then pick out a few larger files of stuff you can't live without.
Try the game and see how it runs and then add a few more at at a time and see how the game reacts.
Remember huge lots with lots of CC are going to be your enemy here so keep it small and you may be ok with all the custom hairs but test them out first.
To be honest I never did have any dealings with windows 2000 so I honestly can't say .