Help! Please

[Datblkricanboi]

Well lately my game has not been working I haven't played for months now and I just don't understand whats wrong I tried doing so many things at first I thought it could be having to much custom content because my DL folder was 21.Gb and after organizing it and compressing it, it is now 14.8 Gb.  So after thinking I solved my problem I tried playing my game again and It still loads very slow and after a while in CAS it crashes I don't even get to make it to playing it crashes when Im making a sim and in bodyshop it works for a while then it says application will now terminate. Also im playing my games off of a external hard drive and i have moved "my document" folder onto there and since doing that and reinstall my games it has not worked but it has plenty of RAM it came with 298Gb but after putting every Sims 2 expansion and stuff pack on there and some other things it is 176Gb and on my main harddrive i have 17.2Gb and I have even tried to move it back onto my main hard drive but it crashes even faster on there and loads even longer...what can be the problem???  

[Theraven]

15 GB is still a lot of downloads. No wonder your game loads slowly...
My computer tends to have random crash problems when going over 20GB of downloads. And my computer is better than most. With everything in, it can take 30 min or so to load.

How much memory (RAM) do you have? With Vista (especially), the game tends to terminate when using over 2GB of memory.

And RAM usually comes in 512 mb to 4GB. The 300 GB is the harddrive, or saving space. Having lot of room on the harddrive available can be a little help, but that memory is a lot slower, and not as effective.

(to compare, I've got 545 Gb available on my harddrive, windows vista, and 4GB memory. All EP/SPs, and currently somewhere between 17 and 20 GB of downloads, since some of it is backup archives and pictures)

(Oh, and two quick forum tips: lay off the bold writing if you've got a lot of text, and use punctuation... Both makes it easier to read )

[Datblkricanboi]

Ok sorry about that I had no idea and I'm not sure how much RAM I have,how can I tell? Is it the numbers under the area that says total size because if so it reads out 33.8 Gb and for my external drive it is 298Gb.

[Theraven]

If you press ctrl+alt+delete, you'll get the task manager up. Under "performance", and under "physical memory (MB)" you see where it says "total". Mine says 4094 MB, which is the same as 4GB.
There, you'll also see how much memory your computer uses at all times.
If you have Vista (and possibly also Win7), you can also find it by clicking "computer", then "system properties", and find it under where it says "Memory (RAM)".

I can't remember if the XP task manager looks the same, but you'll find it the same way. It is also listed under computer properties.

[Datblkricanboi]

Ok I did that and under total in physical Memory(K) It says {522240}

[Theraven]

Then it looks like you've got 512 mb, which is very little, and could easily be the problem.

It's the same I had on my laptop, and that one got hiccups if I ever got over 9GB of downloads. Usually no crashing, but loading times were anything from 1 to 1.5 hours and saving took ages... It's a wonder it survived 4 years. It's still alive, but goes black whenever it feels like.

[BlooM]

Its a common problem that that after reorganizing your stuff things go even worse....
You could try the following.

Go to sims 2 directory and backup all your caches!
Delete your thumbnailscaches in your thumbnailfolder.
Then delete the caches in your sims 2 directory.
Remove all you CC into a backup folder(Take it out your downloads folder.)
Boot the game up so it will generate new caches.
Then put like 2gig of CC back into your downloads folder, boot the game again.
Close it and add the next 2gig of CC, boot it up again.
A time consuming process but it will reorganize your caches wich at this point still contain alot stuff of the earlier 21GB

[Theraven]

Also, sort through your downloads and figure out if you really need everything. Take out the stuff you don't need, and put it in a folder outside your gamefiles - so you have it in case you need it sometime. Several sites has shut down recently, so it's a good thing to have backups of downloads...

I know I need to reorganize my stuff soon - delete some and move out other things. I just haven't gotten the time to do it...

[Datblkricanboi]

Ok I'm going to try it out right now! and I'll sort through my downloads and figure out what I really need,But thanks soo much you guys are great  

But I have one more question I hate to sound so dumb but Bloom, do you mean like go to the EA Games folder then into The Sims 2 folder nd delete those files in the thumbnail and other folders?

[BlooM]

Dont delete any folders, just the files in the thumbnails folder

The other files you can delete are the:
Cigen.package
groups.cache
accesory.cache

Those are located in your sims 2 folder
But plz backup your files before deleting anything.
I dont want to be responsible for any loss