... Here's a possible reason why.
I got Late Night last night (yay!) and I discovered when I loaded up a copy of Bridgeport, my game crashed instantly. I'm not sure how my usual save was faring (I didn't check), but it wasn't looking promising.
But, while I was checking out what might be the issue, I discovered two things:
1.) The Late Night .exe was not on my DEP list (because I forgot to re-add it after installing, stupid me).
2.) One thing that EA patched was that the Sims game is now *automatically* allocated <2GB, so you don't have to set it manually anymore.
If any of you have had to use the trick of increasing TS3's memory allocation before, then you'll know what I'm talking about; it's something that prevents a lot of crashing issues, and it's about damn time that EA made that automatically set so that people don't have to download CFF Explorer to fiddle with their program's settings.
But what it also means (I'm assuming) is that, particular in Vista/Windows 7 systems, this makes the program look unstable and unsafe, so Windows automatically shuts it off when it starts drawing too much memory. I could be totally wrong on this, but, it seems logical -- and it also means that people who weren't <2GB'ing their program previous weren't aware that it now is, and so they don't know how to tell their computer how to not wig out about it.
In a nutshell:
If you're having crashing issues immediately upon start-up, particularly in Bridgeport, you probably need to add The Sims 3 to your DEP Exception List.
The DEP List (DEP: Data Execution Prevention) basically just tells Windows what programs NOT to shut off if they look insecure.
To add Sims3 to your DEP Exception List, here's a few sites that explain how:
For Windows XP: http://www.updatexp.com/dep-exceptions.html
For Windows Vista: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/65790-dep-turn-off-programs.html
For Windows 7: http://www.itechtalk.com/thread3591.html
The Sims 3 EXE file you'll be looking for, if you are doing this for Late Night, is:
C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Late Night\TS3EP3.exe
Anyways, I hope this helps anyone that's having crashing issues. If not, make sure to do the usual things, such as checking for mod incompatibilities, mods that haven't been updated yet for Late Night, yada yada.
Have fun, y'all!
Thank you. I did that DEP thing just the other night because I kept getting my launcher had crashed even though my game worked. I never had to do it for my Vista before now. I had noticed a little pop up on tne bottom of my monitor that showed something about DEP and then realised what was happening. The launcher stopped crashing when I bought store stuff. I won't know about when I start the game until I play this weekend.
ReplyDeleteI get the launcher crash as well, but it doesn't really bother me since the game still works. Maybe it's a Vista thing...
ReplyDeletethanks kaleeko, i'll try this on my computer later
ReplyDeleteIf you're still having problems with your Launcher crashing on game load up, make sure to update (again) your EA Download Manager. Apparently that particular issue has been fixed, now.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info Kaleeko.
ReplyDeleteHey, the star rating showed up on this post. I added star ratings to most/all of my blogs but they seem to take quite a while to show up. I think the stars are a new feature.
I did the latest EADM update last night and I didn't get the launcher crash anymore. Hope the fix is permanent.
ReplyDeleteNow we just need a patch for LN. *laughing* Wonder what the next patch will break when it fixes the current problems.