Insimenator.org

I played the Contender family for two hours last night - married Carlos to a bimbo, long vacation (a week? Whatever the longest vacation is) - they had a lovely time. When I went to return home, the game crashed.
When I restarted the game they were apparently in their house again, so none of the Bon Voyage returning from home bits had happened - now every time i try to load the family, the game crashes - gets to 4 blue squares and then hangs.
Short of delete the family and play somewhere else, any suggestions? This is very frustrating.
I do have hacks and downloads but I check regularly, ran HCDU a couple of days ago - and as far as I know I have no hacks that have anything to do with BV as I rarely actually play the BV features.

Have you been patching your game?

Also, even thought HCDU detected no conflicts, it would be worth it to try removing your mods and seeing if that stops the crashing.

Also moving this to the help section. :)

Yes, I was finally able to get the family back after removing every bit of custom content from the game. But even then they wouldn't load. So I moved them out, which I COULD do even though they hadn't properly come back from their hols - so they didn't get the bonuses for after a holiday. After a couple of attempts I got them to loac, after moving them into a completely different house. Of course they look different now, and having put all my hair and clothes CC in the game still works... but I would like to know WHY this happens.
The only patching I do, AH, is that when I reinstall the game, which I seem to do every few months, I patch each EP as I go.
I'm hoping this isn't a general glitchiness but I am not very hopeful. I don't have many hacks, but I like the ones I have :( My downloads folder is not huge, about 1.5Gigs.
Sigh. This is why I left Sims 1 for Sims 2, and Sims 2 for Sims 3, in the hope of a game that would run better.... no such animal with EA I think.