Well infact it doesn't let me install directx9 now because I have 11.

This is an absolute joke.

It throws INSUFFICIENT GRAPHICS when the faulting module is the Direct3D driver. In most cases, it is correct but your case appears to be an exception to the rule. You might be on to something that DirectX may be corrupt.

Is this what you tried running?
http://www.microsoft.com/download/e...ls.aspx?id=8109

If not, try it. Hopefully it will ask to repair and if it does, do it. If it gives an option to remove, even better--run it again after it is removed to reinstall it.


Do you know of anything specific that happened between now and three days ago? Also, did you play Fallout in that period or was the Fallout comment prior to the time these problems surfaced?

Well I did play Fallout 3 before and after the complete Sims 3 installation (the good working one and the now problematic one) but never during any part of installing the sims 3. Only before it existed and after COMPLETE finalisation of Sims 3 + EPs install.

I did run that but it asks for an extraction path so i gave it a new folder path on the desktop and extracted files and ran the setup. It did install some components including various d3x9 dll files, I got quite hopeful at this point.

Still CTD'd when in the 'Create a household' loading screen.

Have you tried renaming/deleting The Sims 3 folder in Documents\Electronic Arts?

Yup, I'd tried that yesterday. That didn't work either.

Random thought: maybe something in that directory is getting set to read-only or, for some reason, the game can't access the directory. If you want to test that theory, create a new Windows User Account and then try running the game from it. If you are an administrator on the computer, you can access it via Control Panel -> User Accounts

Funny you should suggest that. I started to think of trying that last night myself. I'll give it a go. Cheers mate.

Well this is just laughable now....

I created a seperate user account and everything seemed fine, I then logged off to find it wasn't there. Just my usual Admin account and an empty log in box beside it with the words 'other user' below it.

So I restarted, thinking it might appear after that but instead, I get a message saying 'your account has been disable, please see your system administrator'.

I've managed to get back into my regular admin account but for the life of me I can not create any other type of account without these same issues coming up.


WTF?

Virus? This is new to me so I can't be of much help. Windows should never delete a user account without an administrator authorizing the deletion.

Yeah it's weird.

I ran a full scan for malware using a fully updated malwarebytes anti-malware. Nothing found. I'm now running a full system scan through Kaspersky PURE.

This has got to be the most persistent and baffling error I've ever had.

At this point, short of a full format and Windows 7 reinstall (Which I REALLY do NOT want to do) I am absolutely 100% out of ideas.

In your situation, I would probably reinstall Windows myself.

You could try Microsoft Security Essentials. I don't know how well it performs on an already infected computer but, no computer I've seen has been infected with it installed.

I already have that installed lol. My system is clean as a whistle. Believe me I'm very anal like that.

I HAVE realised something today though that MAY well be the cause, and if it is then it's the simplest of fixes, though I'm not holding my breath!

Here goes nothing!

Ok.... so.... this is the part where I hang my head in shame and tuck my tail between my legs. Lol.....

BECAUSE IT WORKED!!!!!

I'm half elated that I've solved the problem (Ironically not because I'm so desperate to play the game but more so because it's become and obsession, I HATE not being able to do anything on my PC that I KNOW I should be able to do! Yes, I'm anal that way,lol.)

Ok so, I know you're dying to know what it was, lol, ok maybe not.

I suddenly realised that I'd installed an app for triple buffering to help with screen tearing and vsync on Fallout 3.... well remember the issue with sims w3 was related to D3D9.dll? wellll the program is callllllled....

D3DOVERRIDER.....

Yes I know..... DOH!

It hadn't even occured to me. All these long winded workarounds I'd been trying and it was this tiny little app running quietly in the background.

DAMN YOU D3DOVERRIDER!!!!!

Thank you all (particularly FORDGT90) for your help and support trying to figure this out with me. I really appreciate it.

and finally.... as the gameshow says.... right now I feel I should say... I am NOT smarter than a 10 year old/5th grader. Lol.

Hmm, interesting. Does that program have an installer or something so I can easily tell if it is installed on the computer? I could make CLA warn of the conflict if it is installed.

I have no idea what is causing this crash. Brand new pc built for this game. Do I need to make adjustments somewhere in my settings? Help!

Processor Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz
Processor Architecture: AMD64
Graphics Processor: Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 (2.06 GiB)

Games Installed: The Sims™ 3 (1.33.2.015002), The Sims™ 3 High-End Loft Stuff (3.13.1.011037), The Sims™ 3 Ambitions (4.10.1.011037), The Sims™ 3 Fast Lane Stuff (5.8.1.011037), The Sims™ 3 Late Night (6.5.1.011031), The Sims™ 3 Outdoor Living Stuff (7.3.2.011037), The Sims™ 3 Generations (8.0.152.011017), The Sims™ 3 Town Life Stuff (9.0.73.012001), The Sims™ 3 Pets (10.0.96.013017), The Sims™ 3 Master Suite Stuff (11.0.84.014001), The Sims™ 3 Showtime (12.0.273.015017)
Custom Content: Yes (19 found)

[INSUFFICIENT MEMORY] 4/18/2012 2:40:40 PM
OS Version: 6.1.7601
Installed RAM: 7.91 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 144 MiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x00000000
Crash Address: 0x004711e8 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe":0x0001:0x000701e8

[INSUFFICIENT MEMORY] 4/18/2012 4:19:06 PM
OS Version: 6.1.7601
Installed RAM: 7.91 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 266 MiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000004
Crash Address: 0x005da68d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe":0x0001:0x001d968d

Well, it figures correct that the game is likely running out of RAM and crashing because of it. You have 8 GiB RAM, large address aware enabled, and a 64-bit OS--there's nothing else you can do to increase the amount of RAM the game has available to it.

So, your only option is to decrease RAM usage. If one of those custom content are, for example, a high res texture pack, get rid of it. Otherwise, try lowering some of the settings in The Sims 3 especially things like draw distance. Hopefully you'll be able to find enough memory to free up so it doesn't crash anymore.

I never thought of that. I thought it was world adventures at first so I uninstalled it. I don't have any high res mods but I will look through waht I do have and see if any are too large. Thank you.

I have no idea why it's been crashing. Before I got the error that it wasn't updated to the lastest version (even though it was). After I patched, the game still continues as normal but about 10 minutes in crashes to desktop. Thought it was core mods but I still have issues.


Processor Name: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 970 Processor
Processor Architecture: AMD64
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series (1 GiB)

Games Installed: The Sims™ 3 (1.33.2.015001)
Custom Content: Yes (843 found)

[WARNING CUSTOM CONTENT] 4/24/2012 8:59:45 PM
OS Version: 6.1.7600
TS3 Path: h:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\the sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe
TS3 Version: 0.0.0.20
Installed RAM: 6.00 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 2.69 GiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000007
Crash Address: 0x00b699cb "h:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\the sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe":0x0001:0x007689cb

[WARNING CUSTOM CONTENT] 4/24/2012 9:57:07 PM
OS Version: 6.1.7600
TS3 Path: h:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\the sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe
TS3 Version: 0.0.0.20
Installed RAM: 6.00 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 2.65 GiB / 4.00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000007
Crash Address: 0x00b699cb "h:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\the sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe":0x0001:0x007689cb

Try cutting back on custom content?

Hello and thank you for this amazing program
I'll give you a back story here as i'm a bit confused.
When I got ST i was experiencing staggering/freezes and crashes in SS, but as many people seemed to have issues i didn't pay much attention. I noticed though that I usually crashed after a successful simfest , which by the way were rare for me , as they would mostly reset for some reason. Looked it up and found out Twallan's SP was messing with simfests. I took the mod out and went ahead to update and then test my world for ST. No staggering or freezing at all here. I assumed that the world was more stable than SS and moved on.
2-3 days ago a friend of mine told me that with the new version of SP, she was no longer having issues with simfests. So i plop version 218 in my game to test it out. staggering and freezing came back, and I finally get a hard freeze and a crash during a simfest. I immidiately blame game memory leaks and SP pushing the issue more, as at the time of the crash i had 88% memory usage ( computer with Norton Internet Securty , Norton Utilities (idle),Vista side bar, several backround tasks running and opera with about 5 tabs open uses about 25-30% tops - when the game is not running)
Then I come across this program.. And all hell breaks loose in my head...
As soon as it run the log file it tells me that several of my EPs and SPs are not up to date...How is this possible? Even if i missed a patch ( i know i never did) I got the latest SUPERpatch from launcher. I know that at some point we were getting patches that patched only the latest EP/SP and base game, so maybe something there went wrong. If i Had LN for example when someone else had OLS his OLS would be patched and mine wouldn't because the patch would patch my LN only.
I then save the file in a txt and go to bed. however after checking the file again today I noticed something that didn't show up in the program yesterday. Besides listing my "missing " patches, as a crash reason it instead has [WARNING CUSTOM CONTENT].. So what the heck is wrong? is it SP? or my patches?
Base game version 1.33 (super patched through launcher)

Processor Name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz
Processor Architecture: AMD64
Graphics Processor: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 (1 GiB)

Games Installed: The Sims™ 3 (1.33.2.015002), The Sims™ 3 World Adventures (2.14.4.010002 -> 2.17.2.011032), The Sims™ 3 High-End Loft Stuff (3.10.4.010001 -> 3.13.1.011031), The Sims™ 3 Ambitions (4.0.87.006001 -> 4.10.1.011031), The Sims™ 3 Fast Lane Stuff (5.5.4.010001 -> 5.8.1.011031), The Sims™ 3 Late Night (6.2.4.010001 -> 6.5.1.011031), The Sims™ 3 Outdoor Living Stuff (7.3.2.011031), The Sims™ 3 Generations (8.0.152.011001), The Sims™ 3 Town Life Stuff (9.0.73.012001), The Sims™ 3 Pets (10.0.96.013001), The Sims™ 3 Master Suite Stuff (11.0.84.014001), The Sims™ 3 Showtime (12.0.273.015001)
Custom Content: Yes (93 found)

[WARNING CUSTOM CONTENT] 28/4/2012 5:10:57 πμ
OS Version: 6.0.6002
TS3 Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\game\bin\TS3W.exe
TS3 Version: 0.1.0.34
Installed RAM: 8,00 GiB
TS3 Free VM: 1,34 GiB / 4,00 GiB
Crash Type: ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000004
Crash Address: 0x005da68d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\game\bin\TS3W.exe":0x0001:0x001d968d

ETA: Note that the program lists for some reason that My GC has 1GB memory. This is false. My GC has 2GB memory
I'm trying to gather as much info as possible on these issues , so i can give more info to Twallan, if this is indeed an SP issue

CLA addresses problems in a specific order telling you to eliminate the easiest first and then moving on to the more complex issues.

It sounds to me like you already got it narrowed down to "Twalan's SP." If you want to update everything, you can, but it likely won't change anything.

Slowness could be related to using virtual memory instead of memory. Cutting back on custom content, especially the ones that require a lot of memory, is what I would recommend.

it seems that i get Slowness only When Twallan's SP is installed (excluding some really buggy EA worlds like Bridgeport) I did update everything earlier,( thanks to your patch downloader ) but i'm now shorting my CC and deleting the ones i do not need. But i really need to make sure that it is SP before having Twallan trying to short out an issue that could possibly not exist. Thanx for the help

By the way what is considered a cc that requires a lot of memory? I assume that probably mods would make the cut for it, but I have only 5 (all by Twallan) i cannot live without