Blue screens killing my game (& sanity)

[Vividmiss]

I've never made a help post before so I hope this is in the right section.
For over 4 months my game has been virtually unplayable due to constant BSOD's. I have been putting off making a post about this in the hopes that I could get it sorted, but I really don't know what else to try. I've tried so many different things to fix it that it's hard to know where to start, but I will try and keep this short.

System:
XP, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+, 1gb ram, Radeon HD2600PRO
All ep's and sp's up to BV when the problems started. Now have FT and KB also.

I have tried:
-Updating every known driver, codec, program, everything in my pc.
-Shutting down the firewall, anti virus and any other programs running in the background.
-Reading every page about bsod's here, and at MTS2, MATY, and countless other sites.


I also tried the 50/50 method of trying to pinpoint a faulty download, but no matter how I divide my dl's it's still borked. It seems like any downloads makes it angry. The last time it shut down all I had in the game was 2 new sims in a new empty neighbourhood, on a small empty lot with only 2 walls. In the dl folder was the hair, clothes, genetics of the 2 sims, Insim obj edition and a few MATY hacks. I removed these files and put some other dl's back but it still crashed.

The game is throwing so many errors at me, and I have tried so many different fixes, so attatched is a text file with the detailed (rambling) notes I have been keeping of everything that has been happening (and the dxdiag text). Also attatched is a zip with some screenshots of some of the funky errors that are hard to put into words

If anyone has any clues about how I could fix this...or just let me know if it's a game prob or a hardware issue...I would be grateful to say the least

[Theraven]

have you tried playing without CC at all (only maxis content, empty lot and empty neighbourhood?
did you install a new EP before the problems started (or at least shortly before?)
do you have a camera hack or old global mods installed?

and some of these problems look like they're purely graphic problems (like the fireflies, and the red/black flashing sims). I think you should be able to find the problem just by looking on the flashing colors (like blue usually meaning missing mesh)
maybe your graphic card don't support parts of the game.

insim is NOT compatible with FT yet (although it might seem it is for some)

[Vividmiss]

Thanks for your reply theraven. I did have a camera hack but removing it made no difference. The problems started the day I got this pc. The same setup worked perfectly on my rickity old laptop that died. But since replacement laptop mobos require a second mortgage  I got this instead. I know it's not the greatest computer, but I did my research and found a lot of people using the same setup as this with none of these problems. That is why I was wondering if it's possibly a hardware problem, since the pc blue screened on another game and whenever I tried to lower the anti-aliasing in the ati ccc. I posted the pics incase they gave some clues about what the main problem might be, but really the graphical glitches aren't that annoying, it's the blue screens that worry me.

I tried running the game with no hacks, cc or anything twice and it ran ok for the 30 mins test runs I did. But that's probably not very conclusive because the time it takes to blue screen is usually 5-10mins but can take up to 3+ hours.  There been a few times where I thought I had isolated the problem and played a lot for over 2 hours until it bsod'd, then I would reload the game and go back into the exact same lot without changing anything and it would blue screen in 5 minutes *sigh*. It's frustrating that there is absolutely no pattern to this. Also during all the notes in my zip file up there I did not have FT installed. I only put that in about 6 weeks ago and again it made no difference.

Sorry I'm rambling

[Theraven]

since the problems started when you got that laptop, there's probably something that isn't as it should with the computer. either it's the drivers, or the graphics/video card or something. maybe too little computer memory? (I'll not pretend I'm an expert on this, but it looks like this might be the problem...)

remember to also reset the camera settings. in the gunmod camera thingy, there was some kind of a backup file for people that wanted to get back the original camera.

[Vividmiss]

Thanks theraven. I'll double check that my camera settings were restored correctly and see if that helps. Btw this is just a pc, I gave up on laptops (way too expensive to repair/upgrade).

[jaccirocker]

I had this problem for a long time on my old PC, which was brand new at the time. One thing I found that helped was to run the guid check thing with simpe, once I removed anything that had duplicate guids it worked fine with right at about a gig of CC and over 6 gigs of bodyshop cc in the saved sims folder. Also I had to roll back the drivers for the graphics card. The only thing is that was with an nvidia card. I also disabled shadows and put the lighting on low. After doing that my game ran fine but anytime I went over the gig of cc or had something with the dup guid, or changed the driver the bsod would start up again. One last thing I did was do a clean install of the games, so that all my scripts were the correct ones. (lighting, cameras, etc.)

[Vividmiss]

Hey thanks for the tips jaccirocker. I'd better find something to do for the next few hours while I wait for simpe to scan my folders My dl folder is about the same size as yours (1gb cc, 4 gb bodyshop). I've never stored anything in the saved sims folder except what I make. Maybe I should try migrating some stuff over there. Thanks again.

[jaccirocker]

You are most welcome. I did that trying to keep from having conflicts then after awhile I kept it that way. Yup unfortunately the first time takes a very long time. Do you know how to disable the conflicting guids? If not I can explain it pretty easily it's very simple. If you do then I hope I didn't offend you. I had to have help my first time.

[Vividmiss]

No offence at all...actually I was just about to try Google and find out how to do that but if you don't mind posting it here that would be great. (I'm ok tinkering with neighbourhoods in SimPE, but when it comes to objects I'm hopeless). And boy were there a lot of conflicts! It's going to be a long day