I have a laptop which appears to be running quite low on memory recently. It's fine genraly it's just when I try to run huge programs it crashes, freezes or restarts itself. I don't play any other games other than Sims 2 but I notice the same thing happens if I run itunes and another program together.

The problem accors at different times depending on the neighbourhood I choose to enter. I am able to load the game into a neighbourhood I don't play / haven't played at all, as I only normaly play one neighbourhood. IfI try and load my 'normal' neighbourhood it crashes. I've never had this problem before on Sims 2 with this laptop, it's slowed down and at times been unbareable with it's slight freezes but it's always recoverable and genraly playable.

Recently though I've discovered SimPE and custamisation, I've installed serval files into my downloads folder and fiddled with SimPE quite a bit (particualy on the neighbourhood I don't play). I wouldn't say I'd made majour changes in SimPe, just changed a sims name, increased and decreased some relationships, and fiddled with a sims grades so they could get a grant for university. Something is telling me these changes are the problem, although I could easily be wrong as I'm not technicaly inclined.

The family that I edited crashes the actual Sims game, when I try to load it. Which is what's sugesting that to me. Whereas if I load another family in a different neighbourhood it's the actual laptop that crashes.

I'm shutting down everything I can process wise, as far as I know I have no virus / spyware or whatever. I scan daily with three programs so I'm pretty sure of this.

Is there anything else I can do? I really miss playing my game.

I've read about making a new acount for my sims game. Would this be of any help, or just take up more memory on my laptop leaving less for game play thus making the problem worse again.

Thanks in advance. Sorry if this was rambling, or non sesical English isn't my first language and I seem to be becoming worse at it recently. (I play my sims in English though if that makes any difference to anyone.)

Edit: Just remembered to say, I don't have Nightlife installed yet, or the EA patch as I'm waiting to install nightlife first for simplicity.

When was the last time you did any maintenance on the laptop:
1.clear out temp folders
2clean out internet temp folder
3get rid of any programmes you installed but dont use(as long as you can reinstal if needed)
4clear out recycle bin
5go if you can into safe mode & defrag the hard drive

Thanks. I'll try that, the laptop had mantenance done on it last saturday when we wiped the whole harddrive off. Not fun, but it did make it faster temporeroly.

I may be being stupid here but where is my temp / internet temp folder?

monkeymad, did you have this problem before you reformatted your hard drive?
If you're using i.e, you can delete your temp internet files through internet options.
The best way to make the Sims work better if you don't have much memory is to close down all background applications including antivirus software before you play. Running i-tunes at the same time as playing a resource- hungry game is not the best way to get great performance. If you want music in the Sims, you can add your MP3s to the music folder, and get your Sims to play them on the stereo. Also, make sure you don't use too many high poly meshes in game. Bairy has a great guide to optimising your game performance. You can find it at http://www.sims2techguide.net/article.php?p=35

No I didn't have it before the harddrive was rebooted. I also don't run itunes at the same time as the sims (sorry if that wasn't clear) I just have the same problem and mentioned it in passing in case it was relivent.

Thanks for the link.

are you absolutely sure that you did a clean install?
if you did you might need to back track over exactly what you did.

can you find any folders or files like in this format: namesomethingorother[1]
the [1] is what i'm looking for, this might indicate duplicate folders or files
also could be (1)
also check all your driver files & any other relevant software is up to date.
hope this makes sense