I'm rather puzzled by this problem, myself. Perhaps your disks are not clean? After not playing them for some time, they might have been scratched or damaged in some way?

Last year, I got a nasty trojan that had a pop-up in it-it took about 18 hours of debugging my computer to get rid of it, because it is a "stealth" trojan. Looked just like the real thing for advertising a "antivirus" program.

I'd recommend running Avast thoroughly, SpyBot and installing a AV program on top, to run in the background while you're on line. No Script is an excellent way to ward off the pop-ups that come on nearly every website around, and they update it nearly weekly.

Then when you're done, you can get CCleaner and clean out your cookies when you log off.

Those things, and crossing your fingers, will help your friend out.

I know the pain-I have had a few instances where the house was a great one, and I had to do this to save the family. Darn, after all that hard work to furnish it just right, and then you have to destroy it!

On the other hand, though-you do get the chance to improve it the next time!

In short, no. The house is borked, badly. You will have to remove them from the house, bulldoze it and start over again. The house is not going to work with them or any other family. Evidently there's something in it that is conflicting in your game, and it's just going to be easier on you to just start over.
Sorry.

There is a "special wedding arch" as a download-by Marhis at MTS. It does those "extra" spouses quite nicely.

It might be possible, but it takes a lot of work to do it. If you're willing to learn how to do it, you should head over to MATY and just search using search terms such as "subhood", etc. They have some very instructive and intense tutorials on how to attach hoods to one another.
In my view, it would probably be easier just to download a existing merged neighborhood, such as HP's, or SaraMK's from MATY. They're complete and the creators did all the work.

But of course you're the final judge of what you want to do.

Yes, there is: click on the links in my signature.

Also to be deleted from time to time: the content of your "Thumbnails" folder in the game. This gets huge after a few plays, so deleting these files will not hurt the game and will possibly speed it up, except when you start browsing the items.

There's also one other thing (if you haven't done it yet) that you could do-use the Compressorizer on your game dl's.

It can knock off a significant amount of size on those. I wouldn't live without it!

Actually you can get the "notownieregen" from MATY, as well as a hack from TwoJeffs that allows you to ban all townies from ever visiting your neighborhood. The empty template is cool, but you do have to replace your original neighborhood templates (and save them somewhere else, people!). I've done it before, but it's a bit of a pain.
But for those who do get by, there are alot of evil ways to get rid of them via Insimenator...wonderful machine. Death by anything you want!

One of my lots has a graveyard populated with various townies. Good place for them, I say!

Another question: have you cleaned up your computer lately?

Defragging is one way to speed up the game, if you haven't done so. Getting rid of unneeded/unnecessary programs is another way. These are good programs to use in cleaning up your HD from unnecessary stuff:

http://www.piriform.com/ (CCleaner and Defraggler)

But as has been noted, the amount of CC, and your chip set are all culprits.

It sounds like there's something else in your downloads folder that is causing the crash.

Have you tried using the HCDU (Hack Conflict Detection Utility) for the hacks in your game? If not, you should do so.

The tried and true method is the 50/50 one-where you take out 50% of your downloads, run your game, put them back in, and then try the game without the other 50 %. It is a bit tiresome, but it works. The only other method that I've tried is to do it one download folder at a time.

It could be anything. But it sounds like you could have something that requires more than the base game and causing the crash.

It will be a long process to find the culprit, sorry.

It might be the house that they're in. I've had it happen with one or two of mine-the house somehow gets corrupted and the family becomes unplayable.
I deal with it by taking them out of the house (don't play them beforehand) and moving them into a new house. Always works for me. You also should bulldoze the house when do it, as well. Sorry if it was a custom house, but perhaps you made a backup?

Actually, we believe that by putting the sim points on the purchase price, EA is making the store more profitable by coercing people to use the sim points in their store. After all, they'll just write off the cost of the additional advertising involved to taxes. That way they don't lose a cent in any case.

That's one of the reasons they've upped the price. Don't bet on there being any real improved content. We think it's just another way to sell the store stuff. EA doesn't like the idea of free content, dontcha know? They used to, but now it's all profit and more money, preferably for them.

They've learned a valuable lesson in the past 5 years-never give a sucker an even break.

Hi Guys

We wanted to keep you informed about the upcoming pricing that has been announced for Sims 3 World Adventures EP. News has now leaked out that the price for the EP has gone up by $10 (US and Australian) and 10 pounds (UK). EA is justifying this price increase by including $10 worth of SimPoints for the Sims 3 Store with the EP.

In the current finacial situation, this increase is unfair to people who don't want to use the store and those suffering the effects of the global financial crisis.

We have started a petition on an official Petition Site, please sign and contribute your voice.

http://www.petitiononline.com/wa2dear/petition.html

Kind Regards

The Staff of Reclaim Your Game and Prism.

http://www.the-prism.com/index.php