Bizarre/Aggrevating Freetime crashing

[HeavensNight]

There I was happily playing away when all of a sudden all of my sims and all the animations going on around the place just stopped, like time had frozen. I could still move the camera around but I couldn't interact with them anymore. I exited the game, saving in the process. I knew it risked cementing this bug but I didn't want to lose hours of progress. I reopened the game and went back to the lot only to be faced with the blank faces of my staring sims.

At this point I realised I was in bother so i thought to do some troubleshooting. I tried to enter another lot but after it finished the loading animation the egg timer and loading screen remained and nothing happened. On one lot I even saw a small window open on the bottom right, like when the maid arrives, with Mr Humble or whatever his name is walking around. I went to a different neighbourhood, Disiderata Valley to be exact and things worked normally. I went back into my Downtown in Riverblossom Hills and moved the sims out then bulldozed the house. This didn't fix anything though as entering lots still caused the same effect. Curiously though, the lots that came with Downtown by default i could enter, despite it taking far longer to load. I tried deleting and re adding a custom house to downtown to see if that would fix things...but it didn't.

Is there any way to fix this? I really don't want to start again with my sims.

Thanks in advance.

P.S I've also been experiencing that blasted 'jump bug' where sims just 'pop out' of interactions.

[pennyhugo]

I have experienced that all of the animations stopped when I used the testingCheatsEnabled and took the genie lamp from there and wished to make my Sim beautiful. After an error, everything stopped. I did the Force Error one and everything's back to normal now.Or just click on Delete if the error comes out again... I hope this helps...

[Rayea]

have you tried taking out the downloads folder?
i know its dreastic, but i have found that alot of stuff seems to work again when you take the folder out.

so far, i have had lots of crash to desktop with freetime, even when in the desiderata vally hood (i dont DARE go to my own custom hoods, i bet they would explode *eye roll*)
ive take tones of hak items from my dl folder...sinfull shower (sob, poor Jack) the BV houskeeping fixes, my crafting stations..it stopped crashing when i tried to go into that house with the genie lamp in the grampa's atic at least, but im still debugging and checking.
took out my OfB foods too, but my sims2 vanilla foods seem to be ok..(made some japanese dumplings i dl from sim2 libbido..no crashing on making, eating or cleaning)

so, only think i can think of with the stuck non ft hood is, take out the dl folder (or if those sims have custom clothes/hair ect, try taking out the items and hak and so on folders), load them up, replace all the flashing custom items in there (or at least, all the interactable stuff..but i think display items that just have 'view' are fine) nd then try putting the folder/s back in after a save and reload them.

[pennyhugo]

yes, must be the custom skins, hairs or eyes... cuz it's only the making your Sim beautiful wish option when you click it, then error comes out...
But everything else is just fine...
Thanks ~_^

[PegasusDiana]

The thing some don't seem to understand is just having borked CC in your game can cause other things to appear borked. Ok say I'm in the kitchen and I want to have a whopper from Burger King. It's a custom food I've downloaded. My game crashes so I think it's the Burger King Whopper crashing it right? Wrong. The game still has to render and read all the files in the kitchen. Now you have a sink in the kitchen without the tinker option. That could very well be what may have just caused the crash because the game is looking for those things. Now let's say we have a sim in the living room and we're making them study. We have another Sim in the house we can't see what he's doing but he's trying to tinker with something or get creative with something that doesn't have the new options or skills. Your game is going to crash. And your going to think it has something to do with the new bookcase, or studying a new skill. What I found with the game freezes is it's a custom build item causing it. It could be a door, a window, a fence(I found the fences borking things) so like I said in the other thread I have no idea what the game is looking for or how it's reading them. But I took out all things without the new options and went through my fences one a time. Tested each bed one at a time. Yesterday I played it hard for 6 hours no crashes. Then I let it run the rest of the day just checking on things with all CC other than plumbing and electronics those were Maxis. Not one crash. I took out all the little object mods for changing time or aging, because of the new option to age up townies with your sims.

[HeavensNight]

I took out all the hacks from my download folder and it seemed to fix the problem. I'm going to try slowly readding them and seeing which one causes the problem. Some of them are too good to play without!

[PegasusDiana]

Someone else has noticed some problems with some of the custom foods so be aware of that and look for crashes if your using any. If we all work together hopefully we can loose as few a things as possible of our beloved downloads. Although I deleted a ton already so I don't want to loose anything else. I might cry. lol

[caffeinated.joy]

custom foods/carreers/cas screens tend to be very ep dependant, meaning if made with say, NL, they won't work with other eps, no matter if the creator says they are base game compatible. So many things change with coding for food/jobs/cas with new eps it makes it difficult, which is why I never use them, no matter how pretty they are.

[Mehrlicht]

After Seasons and Bon Voyage I have made a huge maintenance W-O-R-K (!?) in my downloads.Finally everything was working fine and I enjoyed deeply building and furnishing houses with CC (If there were no cc I would immediatly stop playing Sims 2).

Now again a huge frustration:After installing Free Time.Several wonderful sets which worked perfectly until now are now unusable.My game crashes when I click the Doors/Windows menu.I am testing and testing soooo muuuch.
I know that ram and graphic card are ok.2GB ram +nvidia Geforce 6600GT.
I have 10,6GB downloads.I have tested the game while adding files step by step.Have removed all problem files with GUD conflicts (scanned with SIMPE) .Have no hack.

It could now be ok : My downloads folder is nearly complete,but I still wish to add some sets that I love.No windows,no doors :Sofas,tables,bookcases,just objects of the buy catalog.
And they are conflicting with something in my windows/doors.All other menus:Fences,Gardening etc are ok.

Of course I may be wrong 'cause I am not an expert.But I think that some of my custom windows/doors are conflicting with several files. I am ready to remove the problem windows/doors.But I don't know which ones.It means a huge testing time and the tests are only worth if everything is in the downloads folder (exception for walls,floors and terrains) .Each test takes a lot of time...

Of course if I launch the game with another "EA Games" folder and less cc it works perfectly....But it doesn't fix the problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.
Have all a wonderful weekend.Hugs.

[Netza]

After Seasons and Bon Voyage I have made a huge maintenance W-O-R-K (!?) in my downloads.Finally everything was working fine and I enjoyed deeply building and furnishing houses with CC (If there were no cc I would immediatly stop playing Sims 2).

Now again a huge frustration:After installing Free Time.Several wonderful sets which worked perfectly until now are now unusable.My game crashes when I click the Doors/Windows menu.I am testing and testing soooo muuuch.
I know that ram and graphic card are ok.2GB ram +nvidia Geforce 6600GT.
I have 10,6GB downloads.I have tested the game while adding files step by step.Have removed all problem files with GUD conflicts (scanned with SIMPE) .Have no hack.

It could now be ok : My downloads folder is nearly complete,but I still wish to add some sets that I love.No windows,no doors :Sofas,tables,bookcases,just objects of the buy catalog.
And they are conflicting with something in my windows/doors.All other menus:Fences,Gardening etc are ok.

Of course I may be wrong 'cause I am not an expert.But I think that some of my custom windows/doors are conflicting with several files. I am ready to remove the problem windows/doors.But I don't know which ones.It means a huge testing time and the tests are only worth if everything is in the downloads folder (exception for walls,floors and terrains) .Each test takes a lot of time...

Of course if I launch the game with another "EA Games" folder and less cc it works perfectly....But it doesn't fix the problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.
Have all a wonderful weekend.Hugs.

I have the same problem as you and another one over at mts2 have it too...its really weird. :S

[Mehrlicht]

Netza,I am not yet finished with testing and testing,but honestly I think that I have made a step forward...I share it with you: Maybe it can help (not sure,of course).

Since I absolutely wanted to add some beloved sets before considering my downloads complete, and because of the crashes that occured each time with the door/window menu ,I decided to "work" (!?) differently.

I have made a search with the search tool of the start menu (windows xp).Have typed "window" .I could access most of my custom windows and moved them from the "Downloads" folder to the desktop....But:Very carefully.They are all sets and I made sure that after all tests I would be able to have them back correctly in my downloads.

Then again: Testing and testing.Now I have all my beloved objects files (buy and build) in the downloads.I am adding windows step by step.Some have crashed and many have worked perfectly .Now I'll get some sleep and tomorrow continue with the tests...

I feel that the (happy) end is near and feel somewhat released,but its still a long work because of the long loading times.

Like you I have noticed on other forums that many of us are experiencing crashes with the build catalog.Its a real problem: Custom windows and doors are such a great addition to the game.

Hope that you'll fix your problems soon.Good luck.Hugs.

P.S. I have downloaded many doors and windows from HERE.And: They are ALL working fine.Thanks to the wonderful creators (and experts).

[Mehrlicht]

:happy8:Just some news.I think that my hard work is finished.I had to remove several windows & doors that I loved but now the game is working fine and I  can again enjoy playing.There are 10,4 GB in the "downloads" file.
Big hugs.

[genecyst]

:happy8:Just some news.I think that my hard work is finished.I had to remove several windows & doors that I loved but now the game is working fine and I  can again enjoy playing.There are 10,4 GB in the "downloads" file.
Big hugs.

I had around 18gb before i cleaned my dir, down to 12.5gb ATM (see pic). Took too long to load and then it was so painful when it crashed and had to load again. I'm thinking the freetime crashes are just a bug that ea will fix in time. I've googled it and seen alot of the same thing from different people around the net. I myself have the problem on 3 different computers with and without CC and i even did a clean install of windows on one and that didnt fix the problem and all the sims 2 installs have every expansion and stuffpack. All have nvidia video cards in them as well so that could be it too as it used to happen with bon voyage till nvidia released new drivers that stopped the crashing and everything was fine till now. Just have to wait and see what the patch fixes i guess?

[timberario]

i have the same problem, krysilove.  i went on vacation and all my adults in the family vanished, one by one.  then my save option disappeared.  ever since then the problem has escalated to where i cant even go downtown at all.  my game crashes while its loading.

i also have a jump bug involving dressers.  no changing clothes for my simmies.  it resets everyone in the house the moment i click on it.  anyone had that one?

and thanks im going through my download folder and just getting rid of the majority.  im in two contests and don't have time for testing.  

[timberario]

i'm not sure, but i believe my downtown fiasco happened after i removed the insimenator.  which means it's something else... hmm... i have many problems with my game... but now i only have FT approved mods so hopefully we can get to the bottom of this.