The Sims 2

sygnus21 · 22 Jul 2011

Everlong said:

Bit of a necro, but thought I'd check it out after I've just seen the amount of views this thread has amassed, lol.

A lot of freezing errors in The Sims 3, and most likely The Sims 2, can sometimes be fixed by adding them to the exception list of DEP if you use custom content for the game. My girlfriend is addicted to the game as well, so I spent time fixing her problems and this usually fixes any freezing problems she has.

To add them to the exception list, right click on Computer>Properties>Advanced System Settings>Settings in the Performance section>Data Execution Prevention tab then select "Turn on DEP for all programs...except those I select" then just add the .exe files of your Sims games. Need to restart the PC for the changes to take effect.

Thanks for the tip. My daughter is a big.

BTW she's done what most of us couldn't do..... get Sims 2 to run on her Windows 7 x64-bit machine..... a lap top at that!

After telling her all about the issues people were having with getting the game to run, and showing here some of the threads here..... she e-mails me to say "Dad, I got the Sims to run on my machine" What

She said all she did was put the disk in the DVD rive, hit install and it worked, she hadn't even patched it at that moment, she did however patch it though.

I check, sure enough Sims 2 is running. Alllllll Righty then. LOL

Anyway thanks for the tip. I'm sure it'll come in handy.

Everlong · 23 Jul 2011

Lol, how odd. Though it's like me and my girlfriend, too. She has the freezing problems with The Sims 3 that doing the DEP trick sorts out, yet I never have any problems

HoneycombAG · 09 Mar 2013

Hey, I'm having a different problem, except this time, in-between the "Please Wait" screen and the screen where you pick to load a readme file or quit Setup, it just crashes. Then, I try to uninstall it and the thing goes "Uhh, no, there's an Expansion Pack installed in front of it. You can't delete this!" So there's got to be a registry key buried someplace or a removal tool to clean out this discrepancy.

SledgeDG · 14 Mar 2013

[QUOTE=sygnus21;1502801]

Everlong said:

BTW she's done what most of us couldn't do..... get Sims 2 to run on her Windows 7 x64-bit machine..... a lap top at that!

Anyway thanks for the tip. I'm sure it'll come in handy.

I can confirm that :) But it only works with the DVD-version (Double-Deluxe or so) but not with the original 4 CD Version.Matter of fact I managed to install S2 on Windows 8 64-bit. But that's a totally different can of worms. It includes copying stuff from a working windows 7 install and some registry tweaking.

Everlong said:

Lol, how odd. Though it's like me and my girlfriend, too. She has the freezing problems with The Sims 3 that doing the DEP trick sorts out, yet I never have any problems

One Thing about Sims 3: That Game has no Vsync !!! Which means, your graphics card always runs full speed. The game itself is internally set to run with 30 fps which is totally sufficient but on my rig it went up to 147 fps :lol Try it out, go into the console (Ctrl-Shift-C) and type fps on if it's any higher than 30 your graphics chip has to work too hard. So those freezes on Sims3- machines with better than average graphics cards might well be related to overheating issues. It wasn't an issue with Sims 2 since those operations were largely done by the CPU which usally is better cooled (and better protected) than a graphics chip/card.
My solution to that: get the 3booter and fpslimiter from one of the best Sims expert sites I know
TOOL: 3Booter, the Incooperative Game Kicker
(I'll attach them here)
In a standard installation you would unzip both into the Sims 2 root folder like C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 and from then on start the game with the 3booter.exe

HoneycombAG said:

Hey, I'm having a different problem, except this time, in-between the "Please Wait" screen and the screen where you pick to load a readme file or quit Setup, it just crashes. Then, I try to uninstall it and the thing goes "Uhh, no, there's an Expansion Pack installed in front of it. You can't delete this!" So there's got to be a registry key buried someplace or a removal tool to clean out this discrepancy.

EA leaves you quite some entries in the registry

The relevant ones all are under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Electronic Arts\EA Games\The Sims 2 (on 32 Bit windows it's the same without the Wow6432Node

Here you find all installed PSs and also all Serial numbers (in the ergc subdirs)
and also here HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\EA GAMES
with more indepth info on the installed EPs.
But rather than butchering the registry you should uninstall backwards until you got rid of what you wanted to get rid of and simply re-install the still wanted EPs. That's a Sims 2 issue in Sims 3 the installing sequence of EPs and SPs doesn't matter anymore. In any case please make a backup of those keys you intend to alter

Good luck and have fun :)

-DG

Everlong · 20 Mar 2013

Good points, Sledge. Never thought about it that way with the lack of Vsync. I'm usually too busy swearing at the PC about the b*astard texture tearing.

SledgeDG · 20 Mar 2013

I know it, right

I only learned about that some month ago myself but it made a lot of sense to me: good expensive graphics cards fused into expensive electronic recycling items. (the first pc I installed ts3 on was simply to crappy to be affected by this EA or Maxi's-Fail but when the fan kept going off full speed on the better computers I investigated and stumbled over said issue)
Even with all the extra stuff added to Sims 3 I personally still like the sims 2 better (mostly because of the huge modding community which has some unbelievably talented people!! Hats off to them for making an average game absolutely awesome :)