I'm irritated, for the past couple of days I've been trying to get some clips filmed for my Sims series, but everytime I try, the game crashes. I've tried everything under the sun to fix it. I delete the cache before entering the game, empty my recycle bin, run CCcleaner, tried clearing up some space, I have the 4G patch installed, I ran the data execution thingy, close all programs before entering the game, restarted my computer and let it sit, I don't know what else to do. It just started having this problem, I can barely get anything done without the game crashing on me.

Can you clarify when your game crashes? Is it only when you try filming, and it runs fine otherwise? Or at startup? Build/buy mode? After some sort of error? Random, or under the same circumstances every time?

Computer specs (+ windows version and game version - UC/CD/collections) may be useful, too.
Have you also done changes to the GraphicRules and VideoCard files?

It only started crashing when I tried playing a certain lot, but I guess it was corrupt even though it had nothing on it. I moved the family out of the lot, and went into another lot for my filmmaking, and it was running just fine at first, but when I started filming from Bandicam it crashed. It has never had this problem before, so this is weird. I tried again today and it crashed after not even spawning the 4th sim to the lot. I think it'll do this no matter what now, and IDK why. I haven't messed with graphic rulers or video card files yet but I already have the thing set to recognize my laptop's screen resolution.

Back, have tweaked the graphic rules and video card files, game ran smoothly at first then it went straight back to crashing. Only thing I can think of is that I have lots of sims on the lot, only, I only have about 38 or something for the series I'm making. I have all these sims on the lot for a reason, and I heard the game can handle up to 50 sims a lot, so why it would be crashing at much less than that I really don't know. Is it that I need a special mod or something for it to be able to handle it? I'm running out of ideas..

How many sims on a lot before crashing depends on your computer. Looks like you reached your limit.

Particularly if the sims use clothes, hair or accessories with high poly meshes or a lot of large textures.same with other CC you have on the lot. The more sims, the more restrictive you may need to be with CC. Could also be a particular CC item that caused issues.

Do you need 38 sims on the lot at all times? Personally I rarely have more than 8-14 living on a lot, and teleport in more for pictures if I need to, often letting them off the lot if I'm done using them so they aren't using any computing power. But I also don't save lots where I've messed around with poses or deleting sims. I'll do any changes I intend to keep first, save, then start teleporting, posting, etc. and quit without saving.

I do because the series I'm making has particular characters I'm working on in this big high school thing I'm doing. I'm just teleporting sims to lot, not having them all live there. And why not save?

Also, there is CC for all of them, but I didn't think it was that bad.. if I don't use CC it'll kinda defeat the purpose of the realism I'm going for

Not saving eliminates any possible issues I might have caused with some micromanaging (I occasionally grow up/age down sims for a picture, and don't want those changes to stick - among other things). Not saving also means I reset the lot to a "perfect" state every time, which is nice because I often end up creating quite the mess with poseboxes and CC. I've also had a lot of issues with pink-flashing, and really don't want to save while that's happening (might have done one time, and came back to the entire neighborhood pink-flashing, so... no), which is why I do all changes I want to save first, and then can mess around as much as I want without being afraid of bad stuff happening.

I treat the lots as "sets" and the sims as "characters/actors", so I don't need to save progress other than build/buy, bought clothes, and changes to the look of the sims I want to keep for a bit, particularly if I know there's a danger of pink-flashing, so I only have to do the changes once in case I need to restart the game. My story lots are saved as perma-Monday the first day, to avoid the school bus (I know there's a mod, but I occasionally may want the school bus).

I also use "extras" by utilizing all possible clothing and hair categories, giving them somewhat nondescript facial features so they're not too recognizable. They do the work of background people, and I'll give them new clothes and hairs when I need a new set of extras. Particularly neat for the hospital setting I often play with, where I think I've used the same set of around 6-8 sims as hospital workers for quite a while on one of my lots (4 different hair colors and 4-6 scrubs each goes a long way. I can also use them several times over in the same chapter without having to import in any more sims. Combine with face masks, and nobody can spot the difference, probably not even me ). I also have a set of teenagers and kids for the same purpose, changing their looks as need be. It also helps a lot if you don't want to create too many characters for the neighborhood as a whole.

Basically, it works for me and the storytelling I do, but may not work for everyone else. Probably wouldn't work for challenges or family play.

So, I tried what you said. Saved before I got started, but when I spawned the 8th sim to the lot this time, the game crashed again. The only thing I can think of is that I enter the testingcheat thing before I enter the lot? Although it never had this problem of crashing when I entered that before. And the game is starting to load things very slowly.

It could be a piece of CC a sim is wearing. Make sure to make a copy and test that copy free of Bodyshop content.

It could be the backpacks I have on all the sims, since the game never has issues with any custom clothing. I'll try that and see

Testingcheats is meant to reveal any potential issues - but usually you'd get an error message if something was wrong.

Yeah, I haven't gotten any error message. I reloaded the game, took the backpack off the first sim and tried spawning more sims to take the backpacks off of them, not even the second sim in and my game crashes once again. At this point, there has to be something wrong with the lot. Although, this will have been the second time I've had a corrupt lot in my neighborhood.

I haven't read through this super carefully, but I have had trouble with Bandicam. Does it crash without it?

I'm not sure cause I always use it with bandicam and it had ran just fine in the past. I don't understand why it would be having issues now.... I tried a new lot in a new section of the neighborhood and the game STILL crashed so it's having serious problems and I don't know what else to do, I'm on the verge of giving up. I clear my cache each time before I enter, but I notice the file regenerates itself right after I exit the crash error. I know this is normal for the file to regenerate, but not so soon? Is it regenerating while I'm still playing the game?? Usually it doesn't do this until a good while after I've deleted it.

Have you tried all of the things above but without Bandicam running? Just to check? If everything runs fine without any crashing, it may not be a problem ingame. Could be some update to Bandicam or Windows causing this, which would fit the "used to work but now crashes" description.

You may also want to check memory and CPU usage with and without Bandicam running, just to rule out any over-use or high spikes (which can lead to program termination).

You should get crash reports in the Logs folder, which may be of some limited help (Sims2Exception files)

(Bit too tired to check if anyone already suggested this)

You need to remove all CC to rule it out.

I'm back. We ordered a harddrive and replaced the harddrive, the computer and the game run smoother, we even had to reinstall the game, so when I get back into the game, everything is running fine but it's trigger-happy. One minute I could click on something and it would do fine then the next minute I click on something BAM! the game crashes. I've tried running without Bandicam, still crashes. I can't be on a lot for a prolonged period of time without it going kaput. I thought it was one particular lot at first but it seems like this is a big problem for all lots. I don't know if I have CC in the game that could be causing issues, because when I went to a fresh new lot with nothing on it yet but Maxis stuff, game still crashed. I installed a few modular stairs on my game before the game started having issues, are modular stairs known for causing problems, or having too many can cause problems? I'm trying to rule out any possibility because I've tried pretty much everything. Even brought my laptop to some computer guys and they said my laptop should be able to run the game fine. I recolored some backpacks for my sims, could that be the broken CC by chance? I removed the backpacks from the majority of my sims but I'm wondering if that even being in the game can cause issues.

Any CC in your game could be the problem, doesn't matter if you have it on the lot or not. I had crashing issues a couple of days ago and it was a CC woodworking bench . I hadn't tried to use it at that point, it wasn't on the lot, it was just sitting in my Downloads folder and crashed my game anyway (ETA: turns out the bench was fine oops lol, it's another object causing the crashing so I shall be yanking out my new downloads tonight to find the real culprit). So. Rename the Sims 2 folder in your Downloads folder to Sims 2 backup and run the game. It'll generate a new, clean game with no CC. See if that runs, then try it with Bandicam. If we can rule out CC for definite, we'll have a better idea of what to try next.

I'm suspecting it's some backpack recolors I made a while ago, I'm trying to think of any custom content I installed around the time the game started having these issues. I've heard recoloring certain accessories can cause problems, I'm just wondering if that's the case, to make this whole deleting process easier, because it's gonna be a long process trying to delete what I think could be causing the problem. Also if it's body shop related (which I think most of it is) it requires me to go and delete it in CAS mode, AND remove it off of the sims wearing it without the game going kaput again so that it doesn't cause even MORE problems cause if I remove the CC from the game while the sim is still wearing it it'll probably just cause more issues

Unmodified recolors directly from Bodyshop in theory shouldn't cause issues - but I guess it depends a bit on which backpacks you recolored and how modified they were. If the base recolor you used was modified, chances are there could be some problems when Bodyshop is creating new resources for your recolors.

Accessories should in theory vanish from the sim if you remove (all instances of) the mesh and recolors from your game, and then delete the cache files. I can't remember if they're replaced with glasses, but I don't think so. As long as you don't save the lot, testing without the backpacks should in theory be safe.

You don't need to delete bodyshop recolours in CAS (in fact, if you use unlockers or extracted outfits, doing so can accidentally delete game files). If you're doing so because you can't identify it, Cat's Tooltip Adder can take care of that for you. And yanking it all out temporarily doesn't cause any problems except ugly sims, although it's always a good idea to backup first, just in case. But if you generate a new game folder like I said, it'll be like a brand new EAxis shipped game, and your original game - with all your downloads - will be in a separate folder, all safe and unchanged. So do that and tell us if Bandicam works. If it does, then we work on sorting out your CC.

I tried what you said, and I'm certain it's the modular stairs I downloaded causing the issues, not only did my game start having problems around the time I downloaded them, but the game works smoothly up until I click on the modular stair icon in build-mode. Well, only if I'm building. I think that existing CC is what is messing my game up, but now I have to figure out how to erase modular stairs.