Thank you for the suggestions. I will look into them.

I was a big fan of The Sims 2 hack which allowed more than 8 family members in a household. I've been searching on my own for a similar hack for The Sims 3 but cannot find one. I keep getting TS2 hack in my google searches. Is there a TS3 hack for larger families available yet?

Thanks in advance.

Razamataz, thank you!! My game is working perfectly now since I did a few downloadings from the website you attached. If Directx9.c wasn't a driver I downloaded, I wonder what the heck it was. Thank you again.

Thank you for the responses! I truly appreciate it.

I have the ATI Radeon X300 drive which is good for the game as it says it's good enough on the back of the box. My computer is only a couple of years old. I only downloaded things from the official Sims 3 website since, as you know, we all got $10 free to download anything we like. I've uninstalled the itmes that I downloaded. I still get the message, but it doesn't happen as often as it did before. It seems that now I can make female sims except, if I'm in CAS too long, it will lock up and I get that message. I'm at a total loss at what to do.

SimGirl, I did update my video drive to Directx 9.0c which is what is recommended on the back of the Sims box. The sound drive recommended is what I have. Thank you for the suggestion though. It was greatly appreciated.

I'm hoping that it's just a problem with the game and EA will have a patch out soon to fix it. 

Everytime that I go into the CAS mode, I can make a male sim just fine. Whenever I try to make a female sim, the game freezes and then a message comes up saying that my ati2dvag display driver stopped working and I have to restart my computer. It shuts down the sims completely and my desktop picture as well as everything else is distorted in color. Now, everything else in the game works fine. I can create male sims, play the game in the neighborhood view, and modify the neighborhood. I downloaded some stuff from the official Sims 3 website. I also downloaded one house from tsr.com.

The funny thing was, when I first got the game, it allowed me to make a female sim. Then, after my experimenting family was over with, I moved on to play the game for real. That's when it stopped letting me make my female sims in CAS.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.