Ok, here is the latest. I unstalled and reuinstalled my game. It worked fine. I started re-introducing the CC again, folder by folder, playtesting each time. I got to the very end of all my CC (minus 1 GB I got rid of in the process of going through it all) and the game was still running fine. I thought I would take the next step and re-introduce my old neighborhood to see if they would play. That's when the game crashed, but only after about an hour of runtime. So can there be something in a specific neighbhorhood causing this, even if it crashes outside of that neighborhood? The nhood that crashed was one I haven't played in ages, that's why I ask.

Does this still seem like a CC problem since it was running fine before I moved the nhoods back again?

Sounds like it's time to run the Hoodchecker!

Sushi - thank you, I did and I'm not sure what to do with the reports to tell you the truth. Most of the errors that come up are missing character files and I don't know how to edit those? But the problem seems to be elsewhere - - -

Okay so it turned out that when I added in my old neighborhoods, I also added in a folder full of custom sims! When I removed that folder, the game ran fine again. So after all this trouble I'm suspecting it is really just one file that is problematic! I narrowed down the entire sims folder to 5 new downloads. I removed them, added in the other sims and the game still ran fine. Thank you so much, everyone who insisted it might be one custom file!! I wish I had taken the easier route of narrowing that down first, but I was so afraid of the size of my download folder, I thought for sure that was the problem. So glad I can keep most of my cc and play as normal **crossing fingers** if these suspicions prove to be true. I put A LOT of effort into custom building and creating lots and neigbhorhoods, so it would have been awful to do without.

Glad it seems to be fixed! Doing the old 50/50 is a daunting job, but sometimes it just has to be done and the weirdest stuff can turn out to be the problem. I once had a rug that crashed one specific lot. I hadn't even used it on that lot. And another time, I had a shirt that had been sitting quietly in my Downloads for years with no problem, right up until a Sim wearing it tried to find a job. I took out my new stuff, then took out my mods, thinking it was a job mod issue. It took a 50/50 search to weed it out, but it went by surprisingly fast.

I once had a jump bug issue with a lockalbe garage door Mod and it boke the locking doors options which left me with no choice other than removing that Mod and playing with another garage door Mod for being able to open them.I've been in the habit of only adding a few things at a time in case one is a big issue because it's easier to find the problem file if there's only a few recently installed files.

Yes, I'll be doing that from now on!

So I got all the way down to only two custom sims with my game still running perfectly and no crashing at all before I said that's good enough, lol. I didn't even want to know which sim it was, I just deleted them both. SO HAPPY I can be on my merry way with all the rest of the cc. I think I'll focus on playing for a bit instead of building, just to make sure I really use all that cc well and also test-play it. I'm so relieve tho!

If it's CC that came with sims, there's a known buggy type of file that can be a problem - it's usually around 6 MB and either named "uhkjhihjkj (11)" or randomly named with a string of letters and numbers. If opened in SimPE it's filled with a lot of CRES files.

This type of file has been known to cause crashes or other issues in various somewhat random situations, mostly CAS or Change Appearance related, or when sims grow up (mostly adult into elder, I think). It can hang out in your downloads for quite a while and in multiple different copies without causing issues, until it suddenly starts causing trouble - for instance after you move files around, or only if spesific sims are called on, or with only elder sims.

Anyway - if you download a sim and see a file among the CC that fits this description, you may want to get rid of that file. The sim and rest of the CC is probably going to be fine.