Troubleshooting Can't get past the Late Night loading screen

Hi, remember me?

Now to the problem: I installed Ambitions and Late Night tonight. The installation of the two EPs worked fine, but when I try to play it, I can't get past the first loading screen (you know where it says Late Night and there's that bar that goes green as it fills up). There's not even any sound.

I have had custom content on my game, but I decided to remove them while installing the EPs just to be sure they wouldn't cause any problems.

I tried uninstalling Late Night and just running Ambitions to see if there was any problem with that EP and there wasn't. Ambitions worked fine.

I installed LN again and I still got the same problem.

I tried adding the Mods folder, deleting the cache files and then loading the game to see if that would somehow work better. It did not.

Then I removed the Mods folder and deleted the cache files. Didn't work either.

Then I removed the user files by renaming the My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 to The Sims 3 Backup and then load the game again. Did not solve the problem.

And I don't think that my game is just loading really slowly. First of all, my Sims 3 games (Base game and Ambitions) have always loaded rather fast. Secondly, there's no sound when I get to the LN loading screen, which tells me there's definitely a problem. The bar doesn't load at all.

EPs I have installed on my PC: Base game, Ambitions and Late Night.

System specs:

==System==
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6000)
System Manufacturer: Acer
System Model: Aspire M3100
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 3326MB RAM
Page File: 1597MB used, 5235MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
==Display==
Name: ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip Type: ATI display adapter (0x9598)
Approx. Total Memory: 1914 MB
Main Driver: aticfx32.dll,aticfx32.dll,atiumdag.dll,atidxx32.dll,atiumdva.cap
Version: 8.17.0010.1043 (English)
Driver Date: 8/26/2010 03:01:04

==Sound==
Description: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Driver Name: RTKVHDA.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5391 (English)
Date: 11/23/2006 09:15:00

==Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives==
Drive: C:
Free Space: 111.1 GB
Total Space: 233.6 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: ST3500820AS ATA Device

(Since my PC's a dual core I've got this drive as well, but Sims 3 is installed on drive C.)

Drive: D:
Free Space: 440.2 GB
Total Space: 476.9 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: ST3500820AS ATA Device


I have no idea what's wrong, or how to fix this. Help would be very much appreciated.

 

You might try looking around here Muffin.
http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Sims_3_Game_Help

 

Yes, I already have looked at that and followed the instructions. Sadly, it didn't help.

 

The game just wouldn't load. It wouldn't freez or anything. Just look as if it was going to start loading, but not actually load.

Anyway, the problem's solved now. I was tipped to check the Mods folder in Program Files in case there were any mods in there that I'd forgotten while modding with the 'old way'. I was sceptical to this because I've never used the old way, but I went into Program Files anyway and saw that there actually was a Mods folder in the Program Files! What do you know!

I deleted the old mods that were in there and now the game works. Real facepalm moment. *rolls eyes*