Game Crashes; Semi-known source

[cantresist17]

My Sims 2 experience have been odd; I think it is because of Vista.  Months ago, the game would just crash at random-I didn't update the driver.  Then the graphics were fixed, but a week later, crashing came again, just less often.

And then as I got more expansion packs, there was less crashing. (updates too.)  At one point, I noticed that I NEVER crashed while playing in a university.  

Recently, though, I rarely get crashes, but when I do, it happens normally at a commercial lot or with a lot of stuff going on (I don't mind that-it's only happened once.)

My worse problem is that their is a certain file for elders that keeps crashing my system (clothing).  It happened once-I thought it was a random one.  Then today I was playing with my elders, and when I moved once in my catalog, the game crashed. (male-elder-clothing.)  I checked body shop-it crashed at the same instant.  So I'm 99% sure why that kind of crash is happening.  I just need to locate the file.  Is there anyway to sort the clothes by age-I do have the download organizer from MTS2.

Oh, and if anyone knows about my other crashes, please help.  Thanks.

[rwills]

You can kind of, sort of sort them by age using Delphy's Download Organizer, but only if that snippet of data is included by the creator of the clothing file. Some creators include it, others don't or else just generically label it as Clothing, with no particular age delineated. You also could check in DDO for broken files and move them out, but DDO may also list false positives, so bear  that in mind.

The best option is the tried and true 50/50 method -- temporarily move 50% of your downloads out and see if the offending file is still in  the game. If so, then temporarily move out 50% of what is left and check again. If the offending file is not in the 50% you kept in Downloads, put in 50% of the files you temporarily moved out and check again.

Eventually you'll be able to narrow it down to just which file is the culprit and remove it.

Time consuming, yes. But also often necessary.

If by any chance you have organized your Downloads into some sort of system or grouping, you may be able to run through the process faster, temporarily removing only those sub-folders pertinent to the item.

Or if you can pinpoint or guess when the problem started, you can try temporarily 50/50 moving just the files you added to Downloads from that date onward.

[cantresist17]

Thank you; I am going to start with all clothing for adult, and then work on down.  Thanks again.