You may remember me asking for help with the Sims 3 because my game kept crashing to desktop randomly with no error message. My original post is here and I posted again here at a later date here. I am unable to update the threads I made with the solution I found because they are locked so I wish to share my discovery with all you here. Please move this thread to the suitable location if this is the wrong place.

I have been playing the Sims 3 now on 2 separate occassions for over an hour and not one crash. This leads me to believe what I have done has fixed the crashing altogether or at the very least reduced the frequency of the crashing.

My PC has 4GB of RAM but apparantely the game doesn't use more than 2GB. With a program I found on the Internet, I have modified my EXE to allow the game to use more than 2GB. If you suffer this problem, you may want to follow my instructions and see if it helps you:

1) Download and install CFF Explorer

2) Run the program, click the folder icon or go to FILE >> OPEN and browse your PC for the Sims 3 exe (TS3.exe) usually found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin

Make a backup of your original exe just incase something goes wrong.

3) Click on File Header at the left, find characteristics at the right and click the "Click here" blue button.

4) Tick "App can handle >2GB address space

5) Ok that and save by clicking the disk icon or going to FILE >> SAVE. Overwrite the file when it asks you to.

This fixed the problem for me as far as I can tell.

I'm not sure why this fixed your problem but having more than 2GB of RAM cannot possibly be the cause of the crash because there are MANY people with more than 2GB of RAM that play the game fine. If this was really a problem then every person would have problems. The program can't just randomly decide to be okay with 4GB on most computers but not yours, so there must be something else going on that could indirectly be helped by this.. but as long as it works for you, then I'm glad you've found a fix It does make me wonder what the real cause is.. apparently something with memory allocation.

This problem happens to some people but not others but I am not sure why this is. Even on the 2 computers that I have tried that crash frequently, when both my sisters play, their game never crashes, it only crashes when I play. I notice I am a lot more aggressive with the controls, I am more speedy when I play, perhaps this causes an increase in RAM usage?

I think as soon as the game reaches around 2GB usage, the game will crash unless you allow the exe to use more RAM like I have done. I cannot say for sure if this is the reason but it has helped my crashes 100% so far. If you google this application I used, it has been suggested for other games with good success. I simply applied this idea to the Sims 3 and it worked for me. Also, I think this is only an issue for Vista users but cannot say for sure.

I've been getting the same crashes. Unfortunately I only have 2.4 GB RAM, so I don't believe this solution will necessarily help. Besides how does it alleviate the missing .dll file? I can see from my exception reports that this missing file may or may not be causing the access violation that brings on the unexpected crash. Does anyone know of any other solution? I've had 3 crashes in as many days and I WANNA PLAY AGAIN SOON! If someone needs more system info, I have collected the pertinent information in three files: GA_dxdiag.txt (as recommended here in the Help FAQ), Pertinent Data Report.html (from the recommended Everest report also mentioned in the same FAQ) and xcpt etc. etc. .txt which is the Sims 3 exception log entry. These are available to anyone who can help - just contact me under Gamineannie here. Thank you!

You have more than 2GB so my recommendation to you is to just try what I suggested. It will do no harm at all and takes seconds to do... it's worth a shot so try it. About the missing dll, I believe the game is calling a debugger that does not exist so I would just ignore that part of the error message, it is not useful.

Thank you Gohan2091! That does seem to be working, since I tested it by briefly playing and was actually able to save the game progress. It had crashed every time I changed "modes" before and I was unable to save any alterations I had made. Next I have to retest while using the "move objects" cheat, which I also had enabled each time previously, and see if it still works. Thanks again!

There are other people who have brought this idea up for TS2 but we have always dismissed in the past because even as staff members we have computers with lots of RAM, all possible games and tons off and have never run into this. But to be honest I've never actually seen a game use even 2GB before so I can't even image what one must have installed to get that to happen.. and I guess the rarity of it would account for the problem. Personally, don't know a way to knowingly force the game to use over 2GB and test the theory but it would definitely be worth checking into if one knew how.

I'm going to go ahead and lock this since this thread isn't actually asking for help and that's what this forum is for.. however, if you feel like making a wiki tutorial on this you're more than welcome. I'll also discuss your finding with some of the other staff and get their input. I still wish we could figure out exactly -what- is up with the few computers that have this compared to the majority but if it helps some people then it's probably worth sharing.