Troubleshooting Game is freezing when I try to enter a house or dorm

Game is freezing when I try to enter a house or dorm

I just installed Sims 2, Uni, and Nightlife on a new computer. Previously, I only had Sims 2 DVD version.

When I first had a problem with Uni and Nightlife, I uninstalled and reinstalled both. As soon as I started playing, it worked fine. Then I saved and quit normally. The next time I opened it, it took me to the neighborhood, then the university just fine. When I clicked on a house to go in, it loaded the household name page with the picture of the characters, went through with the icons in each column, but right at the point that it should actually go INTO the dorm, the hourglass just keeps turning and won't do anything more. It does this with every building in every neighborhood.

I do have custom content downloaded, but I went through to change things for Nightlife (on the things I knew weren't right). But I don't think that it has to do with custom content, since it worked with it once already and I haven't added anything new.

Game: Sims 2 DVD, University EP, Nightlife EP

My computer specs are:

Intel Pentium Viiv processor (2.8Ghz)
2.0 GB RAM
Windows XP
Free Disk Space: 202 GB
Total Disk Space: 224 GB
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE
Driver: nv4_disp.dll, Version: 6.14.0010.8265, Date: 12/14/2005
Approx. Total Video Memory: 256 MB

 

First check that you have the latest patch.

You should be using (at least) version: 1.2.0.355

http://thesims2.ea.com/update/?pid=Help_patches
You can check your version number buy going to

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSBin\

Right click Sims2EP2 and choose Properties. Look on the Version tab if isn't 1.2.0.355 you need the patch.

Post again if patching doesn't fix it.

You might 've made a dog's breakfast of the saved game files by uninstallng and reinstalling. Each EP makes irreversible changes to the saved neighborhoods including each and every sim. Once you start uninstalling and reinstalling, unless you have unerasable back-ups and you are more attentive to detail than a an extremely nerdy accountant, there are more things that can go wrong than there are parts in a space shuttle ... OK that's a slight exaggeration. You don't need to be as attentive to details as an extremely nerdy accountant ... just nearly as

Best way to test the buggered up game syndrome is to drag the entire save games folder out of My Documents\EA Games and put it on your desktop. Specifically remove to the desktop (or to some other place of safety) the folder: \My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\

When you restart the game it will set about remaking the original 3 neighborhoods in their prisitine condition. You may be asked (I suspect that you will be asked) for discs from the other sets. I assume you launch with the Nightlife disc? Have the other ready in case. It will not take too long. If the game then works then it's bad news for the piles of 1s and 0s that you plopped on your desktop of orther safe place ... cos that's all they are ... a good 10 billion data bits with nothing to convey except how much space they are occupying on your hard disc.

I've lost two neighborhoods so far ... I keep coming back for more though

Please let us know how this pans out, 'k?

 

Alright, I started downloading the patch before I got to the page where it said that I already was at the correct version. I ran it anyway and it updated it again.

The problem was still happening, so I did as you suggested and removed the Sims 2 folder from \My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\. It didn't ask me to use any disks, and when I created a new neighborhood, attached the university, and clicked on one of the ready-made sorority houses, it let me go in just fine and the characters were working.

So then I exited, put in my custom content (after running body shop to get the Downloads folder), and restarted the game. Once again, everything was fine. I made a household of sims, put them into a dorm and it looked like it was freezing in the same spot as before, so I did Ctrl+Alt+Del. As I did, it flashed across the screen, asking if I wanted to save the game, etc. So I pressed cancel to return to the game (thinking I was just too impatient) and did not end the program. Going back, it didn't give me the menu that lets you switch between sims, wants/needs, relationships, etc. The screen was acting crazy, too, black patches and such. I decided that this was because I had tried to exit out, so I saved, quit, and exited the game.

Then I restarted it, and went back to the same dorm. Same problem as before. Would not go from the household name page to the actual household. It seems to only work the very first time after a reinstall or something.

 

OK. This one's a mystery, then. I suggest that since youfound a playable situation after a clean restore of the default neighborhoods ... that "we" try the same thing again only this time don't add your custom content. We'll come back to that later.

I'm not 100% clear on the history of the problem.

Your story leads me to think this:

OLD PC - Sims 2 DVD Edition - all worked well and you had lots (or some) custom content.

NEW PC - Transfered over TS2 and custom content and then installed University and Nightlife sometime after which problems began to occur. You then went thru a number of uninstalls/reinstalls ....

Even if that is what happened there is still a blooming great hole in the yarn ... How long did it work after installing Uni & NL? 2 minutes? 2Hours? 2 days? It's kinda important.

Also was Uni and NL installed one after the other without intermediate testing? I remember the fun of reinstalling TS1 and all the EPs on numerous occasions but I always played each EP for an hour or two to convince myself that it was worth the effort of continuing.

With TS2 the game should load very quickly (if you leave out the custom content). I honestly think that an hour or two of playtesting is preferably to pushing it into the same brickwall over and over. Playtesting will often reveal the beginnings of a problem before it gets to the Ctrl/Alt/Del stage.

The EPs have loaded a lot of extra work on the hardware and although that shouldn't be a problem your 7300 is passively cooled. I have an older GeForce 5600/256MB and its itty little fan burned out so I wrapped the whole thing up in a big old block of alloy and heatpipes ... it still hiccups from time to time. Although you have got a long bang for your bucks such items are, strictly speaking, at the budget end of the market. That's not bad but you may find that easing back slightly on the graphical settings will improve things a lot. The game installer hasn't been too clever thus far in dealing with NVidia chipsets & drivers ... although my own display perked up noticeably when I installed OFB.

This all winds around to not being much use to you. I feel you are not totally at sea with tech stuff, so I cousel you just take things slowly. One step at a time.

I would certainly double check for the latest drivers for the NVidia card (you'll find the links in the FAQ's)

Also there might well be a problem for the game itself in coping with that Intel dual core chip (I think that's what it is )

On the plus side you have RAM and hard disc space by the shedload

Oh yeah. You don't need Body Shop just to make a Downloads folder ... just open the Folder up with My Documents and either right click on some white space and choose new folder or do it using the File menu (File >> New >> Folder) name the new folder Downloads -- capital and plural important and look at it to make sure it is there before leaving. But oh yeah ... you won't need one yet awhile, will you?

Please keep us informed ... or correct any errors of my understanding.

 

Alright, it took me a while, but I finally was able to take all your suggestions. Still having a problem. Here's what I did:

I unistalled Nightlife and University. I played in the regular Sims 2 DVD for about an hour or so. No problems. So I installed University. Once again, no problems and played for about an hour. I saved and quit, went back in and played a little more (to determine whether it was working after quitting) and it worked. So I installed Nightlife. I went in and played more and it worked. So I saved and quit and went back in. I was able to enter dorms, so I knew that it was working. I saved and quit again and added my custom content to the downloads folder. I created new characters and put them into a dorm and played with them for maybe ten minutes. No problems. I saved and made more new characters. I moved them into a dorm and played with them for about thirty minutes. Again, no problems. I saved and quit again (Sorry! I know how repetitive this is!!) and then returned to the same university again. This time when I clicked on a dorm to play, it again went through loading the household page, only to freeze on that page while the hourglass kept turning. Using Sims 2 Cleanpack Installer, I disabled all game mods, but when returning to the game, I still couldn't get past that page.

Could it have something to do with creating the sims and moving them in?? That doesn't make sense, though.

 

Assuming you have the latest CEP I can only sympathise with your frustration. However it appears that you performed 2 steps in one. Creating sims with custom content present. Although it seems less than 50% likely that is the cause it's still significant enough to bother me. Sorry.

I still think you should dump the downloads for ever and start over.

Our Favorite Downloads Sites has 100's of recommendations for sites with clean, free, custom content

Mod the Sims 2 has lots of good stuff (all free) including qXpress which is not just for MTS2 but will handle installing all content for TS2

If you hate downloading, period ... then give the Firefox browser a try ... get its plug in called Down Them All ... you can download stuff faster than you can click

Finally don't forget that World Sims also has tons of great downloads as well and that if you want to modify the way the game works (use hacks) then stick to one source to avoid conflicts between different scripts ... I recommend MATY ... J.M. Pescado is a fat, obstreperous jerk but his hacks are awesome and free.

 

Thanks so much for your help. I'm going to do all that and see if it works better now. It might take some time for me to let you know how it goes, though.

 

Just wanted to let you know that the game is working great now. SOMETHING must've been incompatible. I'm afraid that it was the teen pregnancy thing, which I'm very sad about. Thanks again for your help. I really appreciate it.

 

Heh. That hack is most definitely not awesome, with all respect to its creator. I tried it out a while back, to see what the fuss was about, and I found that it was disappointing. It caused some problems that required a lot of inventiveness with the boolprop cheat to fix and it adds a lot of bugginess to several aspects of aging.

It should be noted that the "teen thing" is hard-coded out of the game on purpose in order to satisify and to meet the exacting standards of the ESRB ratings system for a teen audience rating. Hacking the game to permit actions and consequences that are entirely coded out of the game is always going to be perilous because each stage of the hack is adding further to the nested tumour of contaminated variables used by the game to track and record everything from how much cereal little Mary will eat to how many days are left before Grandpa gets to meet up with Grimmie

Because, technically, discussion of the "teen" thing is not permitted at World Sims I am giving myself the final word on this subject and closing the thread to make sure the subject stays closed.

Sorry for the inconvenience