* Apologies if I make any grammar or spelling mistakes English is not my first language.*

I was moving out of home yesterday and came across my old Sims 2 collection and decided to re-install it on my computer. The base game seemed to install correctly and run better that I remember. But I tried to install University with no success. The game installs correctly but when it finishes and goes to update to crashes.

Perhaps it is because I am running windows 8? I tried updating in safe mode following this tutorial for Windows 7 but this did not work. What appears is the update window asks for the Sims 2 disc 4 which I insert and the red bar goes from 0 to 100% instantly and crashes. I tried looking up ways to bypass the requirement of the 4th CD but it is impossible due to copy protection.

I'm out of options here. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

Also, I tried downloading (torrenting) Sims 2 to see if a virtual image might work.

Answer: Nope.

@kwibjo897:
There is already a thread about 'Sims 2' working/not working on Widnows 8: General - A word of warning about Windows 8!

Your issue seems to the main problem, as discussed in the above thread,
The issue is that the University installer crashes when asking for BaseGame Disk#4, which university uses to update to the latest version.

There is no solution, ATM: except to not play on Windows 8, or use virtualization sofware (ie VMWare, VirtualBox, etc) and an OS that is known to work (WinXP/WinVista/Win7)

PS: Make sure to read the site rules regarding posting: Posting Guidelines
Please, pay close attention to Point #3.

I did make a post in that thread saying I would look into the issue with the game installing on Windows 8 (since I downloaded the 90-Day Evaluation copy of win8_x86 & win8_x64)
You can see that post: here

PS: I would, also, recommend, that you post in the thread mentioned at the top of this post: since a lot of people are watching that thread for updates/to add new information (success/failure)

EA should be willing to give you an Origin download of the game, if you contact their CS. It's not ideal, but it's better than not being able to play.

Sorry for the delay but, I have not read the rules sinse I signed up for MTS in 2010 so I forgot the rules.

Second; I found the solution was to use Hyper-V on Windows 8 to install XP which was been made free do download to anyone to install Sims 2 on and update. Then I moved the files over to my Windows 8 actual machine and paste over the current files. This 'tricked' University into installing without asking me to update.

If anyone in the future reads this I don't know if this will work for everyone so good luck!

For that to work you must already have Windows XP installed (the download link is only for updating to Service Pack 3)

Yes, my mistake. I thought it was something wrong with Hyper-V.