Insimenator.org

Yesterday, I installed Seasons on my computer. My game had worked fine until then, but when I tried to play Seasons, the old "The application has crashed. The appliaction will now terminate." message popped up, halfway through loading Riverblossom Hills. I'd had this problem before, so I removed all my custom content and tried again. The same message appeared. Before, when I've had this problem, it was because of a piece of custom content that was conflicting with the game. Once I removed that file, the game worked. This time, though, it obviously wasn't a conflicting file. I know lots of people have had this problem, but I haven't found any "cure" for it yet. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Try deleting the Groups.cache in my documents/ea games/the sims 2.  That has worked for me for this problem.  The game will re-create this file automatically when you boot it again.  If that doesnt work, the only other option I found was to re-install.

For some reason I can't uninstall, either from the Change/Remove Programs list or from the EA Games files on the Start menu. Can I manually remove the files? Also, could the problem be caused by overheating? I've heard that can cause it. If so, how can I fix this?

there is a program (free program) called ccleaner that you can use to uninstall the games.  You can also use it to clean out any registry entried they left behind before you re-install.  Do a search on yahoo or google for it :)  I dont know if over heating would cause that specific problem.  When my PC used to overheat, it would lock the entire system up, not just one program.  But I'm no expert in that area.  Hope this helps a bit!

There is a program from called Revo Uninstaller which has helped me remove programs in the past that I couldn't uninstall from the add/remove programs.  Did you make a backup of your folder in your My Documents directory (once you uninstall seasons you might have to restore your old files).  FYI it is completely free.. just google it.

One thing about the crashing.  Did you have any custom content that you had to modify the base game for (meaning that you put content into the \program files\ea games\... folder instead of \my documents\ea games\The sims 2\downloads)?  That might be something to look at.

Okay, well, the Revo Uninstaller worked, (yay!) and I now have no Sims games on my computer. Now I am trying to find the rest of my EP's in the chaos that is my house. When I reinstall, I'll tell you how it went.