Thanks Jenna.  I'll try that.

I've been having a problem with the Show unread posts since last visit.  It keeps telling we there are no new posts when I click on it, but when I look in the forums, there's almost always new posts.  Is anyone else having the problem or is it just me?

Just on the off chance,

1. Did you delete the maxis base hoods and just have a custom base hood without entering any of the maxis base hoods first?

2.  Are you trying to set up a sub hood, like Uni or OFB, without previously setting up any of the maxis sub hoods?  And have you tried setting up a built in sub hood then creating a new custom sub hood?

The reason I ask, is that when you create the template hoods, the programs sets up all kinds of stuff in the background.  So I set up the maxis hoods, then do I begin creating my custom hoods and subhoods.

But, based on your system specs, it could be one of 4 things.  1.  not enough hard drive space, 2.  not a big enough paging file  3. Overloading system memory, and 4.  Overloading your graphics card.

It looks like you have a smaller hard drive since you have a page file less than 1GB and just under 2GB available (mine is 2GB) so if you don't have enough hard drive space, the program will stop in the creation of new hoods since it can't save the files.

But the error you show is clearly a graphics card error and may be related to the driver updates.  You can roll back to your old drivers and see if that fixes it.

Only other thing I can think of is whether you're using the custom neighborhood terrain templates that came with the game or some you either created in SimCity4 or somebody else did.  If you get one that was too big, it won't work in the game.  Had it happen to me once with a neighborhood terrain file I downloaded.

It depends on where you are crashing.  Since I installed BV, I get a lot more crashes at save, game exit directly from a lot and random.  But the most were went I was going back to the neighborhood.  I greated reduced the number of crashes by saving manually and then exiting the lot either to the neighborhood or just exiting the game.  Don't count on the game saving - do it your self -then leave the lot.  It seems that making the game do only one operation rather than 2 helps.

If you are getting the crash when you save manually, then this won't help and I have no advice on that.

If you're sure it's a large appliance, use either Clean Installer or Delphy's Download Organizer to isolate your objects into a directory by themselves - If you remember which object it was you were trying to use (like a fridge) look for all the custom objects of the same type (have to do this line by line in DDO) - then isolate those into a directory (make sure the folder is not in the EA Games/The Sims directory path).  The point of this exercise being to reduce the number of files you have to test.

Then you can try the old divide and conquer approach until you find the trouble maker.   If it turns out that it isn't one of the files, then try another object type.

If you only just started having the problem, then you probably installed something recently that's causing the problem.  Look in your downloads folder and sort by the date modified column.  Isolate the newest files into a directory somewhere and try the game.  If it runs ok , the use the divide and conquer on the new files to find the trouble maker.

Or you can just try divide and conquer on your whole downloads folder without trying to isolate anything.  Only real difference is the time it takes to find the problem.

No, I wouldn't.  Sounds like you've got a file or two in your cc BV doesn't like is all.   I run over 21K files in my d/l folder with very few problems - none that can't be attributed to a cc file.  Go through your cc and see if you can file the problem files.

Not sure where he went - Unless you told him to move to the greek house via phone or computer, then he should still be on the home lot.. Did you check other greek houses (if you have them).  I've had them go to the wrong one before and if you've got more than 1 Uni hood open, check the ones on them too.  

But if he successfully pledged then at least one of the Greek brothers has a high enough friendship to try this.

Have the greek brother at the house he pledged with the highest friendship call him and invite him over.  Then ask him to move in.  Hopefully, either he has a cell phone or the game will still think he's still on a lot somewhere and he can answer the phone.

Okay.......I'll take a stab and probably suggest something you've heard or seen before but maybe not.

You've got plenty of machine to run the program and since the other games run as well as the base game, it's not likely that it's any type of memory or vid card problem.  Tho I will say that the Sims 2 is one of the most demanding games on your video that there is.  There have been problems with the Nvidea cards since the base game came out so you might not rule that out altogether and search for any threads on that to see if your card is known to have any problems with Sims 2 - probably not but might bear looking into.  

When you load the expansion packs, do you let the game install to the folders it wants to or do you redirect the load location path?  Each expansion has to be in it's own folder so you should let the game choose it's folders.  If you did try to put the expansion packs in the base game folders, then it will definitely wreck your game.

Did you change name of the default "EA GAMES" directory in your downloads folder or "The Sims" subdirectory in the EA Games folder when you loaded the expansions.  If you did, the program can't find it's video settings among other things.

Long shot, but have you run a full disk scan on your hard drive to see if you have any bad sectors?  It could be as simple as the game installing on a bad sector.  Disk scan will fix that.

Another long shot, but did you write protect any of the subdirectories so the game cannot create new files.  On first load after any install, the game will create a number of files and if it can't write them, then it would probably crash.

Now we get to more probable things.

Where you are crashing is is about where the game changes to it's video settings (as opposed to what you run your desktop at), begins to load custom content and the screen with the pack name comes up and blinks and scrolls the cute stuff at the bottom.

Check your video settings and then change to a lower resolution at the desktop if you are running above 1024x768.  I believe that's the original default for the game but it may be 800 by 600.  The idea is to match the game default to see if there's something that's not switching as it should since the game takes over the video.

If you reset the video mode within the game when you tried the base game, make sure you didn't set something to cause a mismatch with your vid card/monitor settings.  On initial load, the game will set to default to your scan rate from the desktop but not necessarily the resolution.

Do you have any custom content in your downloads folder?  If you do, just rename or move the downloads folder to another location and see if the game will boot then.  Don't go into any lots but see if you can get to the neighborhood screen.  It's almost guaranteed that you will get a conflict between new expansion packs and old hacks or mods.  That's usually what kills the game at that point in the load.  If the game boots up without the downloads folder, then you know that's the problem and will need to go through your downloads folder to find the troublemakers.

If you don't get the load screen with the pack name on it before the crash, then you may not even be getting to the point where the game loads the custom content.  That's another indication it may be video.

What order do you attempt to load the expansions?  While EA says they can be loaded in any order, my experience is that the only way I can get all of them loaded withoug a problem is load in the order in which they came out.  University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons and Bon Voyage.  If you have any of the other stuff packs, they are not as order sensative but load them all before the last expansion pack.  

One more issue with the order - BV and Teen Stuff have securom on them.  If either is the 1st expansion pack you loaded - Securom may have something to do with it.   Even removing the programs do not remove securom.  There are lots of threads on securom out there on lots of sites with all kinds of advice what to do about that.

For some reason, this sounds like a video problem to me, but it may not be.  Sims2 is a pretty complicated game and there are a ton of things that could cause what happening.  I hope I gave you some ideas on places to look for the problem.  Good luck.

You might try installing the BV patch.  If you're using sub directories within the downloads folder, BV for some reason forgets that and the patch will probably fix it.

Mine is over 8GB.  25+K files and takes over 30 minutes to get to a lot.  Really wish someone would write a program like there is/was for Sims 1 to compress lots of files into a single file.  Would really speed loading.  Course before it would be useful, you'd have to clean up the downloads folder which is a problem in itself.