Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 12:49 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Memory allocation issue?
I had a problem with crashing before, and ended up reinstalling my whole game, testing every folder of custom content until I found the culprit (I thought), and then removed it. My game was working fine for a couple of weeks, then just started crashing again, last 2 days. I have not added new custom content and the game is crashing once again - this time, only on community lots. I made sure 4GB patch is applied, and all the regular stuffs. But I noticed in the latest log:
Memory: 4044MB
Free memory: 1612MB

That seems like a lot less free memory than one would expect. Am I having a memory allocation issue? If so, is there another way to solve it than creating an empty standby list? I've got that done, so it doesn't seem to be helping? I've included system specs for your reference.

(If I was supposed to add this to my past post about crashing, I apologize! I can find it again and stick it over there if necessary, this just seemed like a different enough problem to start a new thread)
Attached files:
File Type: txt  System Spcs.txt (6.5 KB, 17 downloads)
Description: undefined
Advertisement
Mad Poster
#2 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 1:11 AM
Looks like there's something going on with the patch.

Do you only have 4 GB ram on the computer?
That could be the problem. The patch is meant to access 4 GB, but if that's all your computer has available, it's probably having issues. The patch works best if you have 6-8 GB or more, especially if you have Windows 10.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 2:40 AM
Simmer - I'm not sure, is that what the system specs indicates? That makes sense tho, I'll see what I can find out.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 11:37 AM
It seems to list your system memory as a bit less than 4 GB (the somewhat lowered number is common, though).

There's two quick ways to find the "installed memory" amount.
- Open task manager (right-click task bar at the bottom), wait for it to load properly (the win 10 verision can be slow), go to Performance, and see what it says at the top right corner when you click on Memory.
- Open a(ny) folder, right-click "This PC" to the left and choose "Properties", you should get the system specs. You'll want the "Installed memory" line.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 8:23 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
It seems to list your system memory as a bit less than 4 GB (the somewhat lowered number is common, though).

There's two quick ways to find the "installed memory" amount.
- Open task manager (right-click task bar at the bottom), wait for it to load properly (the win 10 verision can be slow), go to Performance, and see what it says at the top right corner when you click on Memory.
- Open a(ny) folder, right-click "This PC" to the left and choose "Properties", you should get the system specs. You'll want the "Installed memory" line.



Installed RAM: 4 GB

So that's my prob right there :o
Mad Poster
#6 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 9:17 PM
I'd think so. You can try with less CC and see if that helps, but it would depend on how much you're playing with.
Me? Sarcastic? Never.
staff: administrator
#7 Old 16th Apr 2021 at 10:25 AM
Mad Poster
#8 Old 16th Apr 2021 at 3:35 PM
In addition to removing any problem CC,

If you use high-poly hairs and clothes, either pulling those out or making sure those aren't enabled for townies would be a good thing, so all the additional visitors don't make it harder for your computer to render the community lots.

Ways to reduce the number of townies visiting community lots could probably also help, if the crashing happens when there's a lot of sims (and pets?) present.

Sometimes, a CAS item can even be the culprit. If a townie is spawning wearing a bad CC item, the game would most likely crash when trying to load in that particular sim.

If you have downloaded sims, look for a file among the CC that's roughly 6 MB in size, the name a random string of letters and numbers. Opening it up in SimPE would give you a heap of CRES files. If you find anything that fits this description, chuck them out - they're known to cause CAS/sim-related crashes (growing up or spawning on lots, especially elders).
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#9 Old 17th Apr 2021 at 3:50 AM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
In addition to removing any problem CC,

If you use high-poly hairs and clothes, either pulling those out or making sure those aren't enabled for townies would be a good thing, so all the additional visitors don't make it harder for your computer to render the community lots.

Ways to reduce the number of townies visiting community lots could probably also help, if the crashing happens when there's a lot of sims (and pets?) present.

Sometimes, a CAS item can even be the culprit. If a townie is spawning wearing a bad CC item, the game would most likely crash when trying to load in that particular sim.

If you have downloaded sims, look for a file among the CC that's roughly 6 MB in size, the name a random string of letters and numbers. Opening it up in SimPE would give you a heap of CRES files. If you find anything that fits this description, chuck them out - they're known to cause CAS/sim-related crashes (growing up or spawning on lots, especially elders).


Yes, I've thought it might be high poly hair and clothes. I removed everything except those items and there wasn't any crash.

I have notownieregen, which prevents too many townies spawning right?

I'm pretty baffled by this. I started doing the 50/50 method to see if it was custom content instead of memory issue, even though, as I said, I had nothing new in from the last time I reinstalled and it ran perfectly for a couple of weeks. I divided all the "suspect content" into Folder A and Folder B. Folder A in, Folder B out = no crash. Folder B in, Folder A out = no crash. So then I assume it's actually a conflict between something in Folder A and Folder B. I divide Folder B into subfolders: C and D. Forder A in, Folder C in = no crash. Folder A in, Folder D in = no crash. ?!? Does this make any sense? If something in Folder C and D were conflicting, then there would have been crashing when I had Folder B in (which is comprised of C and D) before.

I also copied everything onto my laptop (16 GB RAM), ran the same game and it crashed after an hour. So memory would not be an issue there right?
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#10 Old 17th Apr 2021 at 3:52 AM
Quote: Originally posted by HugeLunatic
Since you mention it crashes only on community, if you use a default community phone, you may want to check if you have an older version that was causing crashes.


I do have a custom default community phone. Strange that I tried 50/50 method and it didn't point to any problem with that file though
Mad Poster
#11 Old 17th Apr 2021 at 6:09 AM
Quote: Originally posted by sobenna_kahill
I also copied everything onto my laptop (16 GB RAM), ran the same game and it crashed after an hour. So memory would not be an issue there right?


That would probably depend if you've properly set up the game with the 4GB patch and all that on the laptop, and whether the crashes happen during the same cirumstances.

I've had my game act completely different on four different computers - my story hood started on an old XP laptop that spent 3 hours loading my game. Then I switched to Vista and 4 GB RAM with 30+ gb CC - No problem - could play for 2-3 days without turning off my game (it didn't like playing with weather turned on, or on my heaviest CC lots, but if you'd seen those you'd understand... ). Same neighborhood on my next laptop wouldn't even load, no chance in the ocean (Win7, 8 GB RAM - game looked quite decent otherwise, though). Gaming laptop with 32 GB RAM and a graphic card probably at least ten times better than the one I had? Loaded the neighborhood but crashed immediately, and I've had no end to crashing, pink-flashing, etc. with that thing. Took me over a year to figure out how to play my game without it flashing pink after 5 minutes of gameplay and then another few months to stop it from crashing after half an hour or so of playing, and it's still a bit unstable
Forum Resident
#12 Old 17th Apr 2021 at 12:09 PM
I theorise that it may be a problem with newer graphics cards. I don't know why this is the case, but from other threads I have come across regarding this issue over the years, it seems to occur on newer graphics cards (correct me if I'm wrong, because although I'm thinking this, I'm not 100% sure I'm even correct). The graphic card I have for example is from 2016 / 2017 I think, and I very rarely, if ever, encounter pink flashing and crashing. I have 2.8GB of CC, 16GB of RAM, use Windows 10, and haven't even used the 4GB Patch, as it never works. The fixes I have used are the GraphicsRules Maker.

Again, if someone else with a graphics card similar to mine (NVIDIA GeForce... or something) encounters this issue, then it may not be related to that and I'll be wrong.

When a game is predictable, it's boring.
That goes for any medium that isn't life.
That's why The Sims 2 is my favourite sims game.
It has elements of unpredictability and everything feels more involved.
The Sims 4 is another story altogether...
Mad Poster
#13 Old 17th Apr 2021 at 4:51 PM
Bit of a long thing...

Forum Resident
#14 Old 17th Apr 2021 at 9:09 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
I don't think Windows 10 helps much, though. For whatever reason, I've had a lot of issues with the RAM suddenly jumping up as if it's being used, the main disc at 50-100% use, but the laptop is idling and nothing is seemingly in use and the task manager is not showing what's actually going on (that thing feels like a joke in Win10...)


I just recently had my game do the purple flashing thing and I panicked thinking that this was gonna be my life from now on before remembering that I never remembered to redo this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/...rs_on_creators/ when I moved on to this machine.

After doing the standby memory fix I tried everything to get it flashing purple again and so far haven't succeeded (when it happened all I did was load lot, remembered that actually I was supposed to add a sim to the family so I went back to neighborhood and from there to CAS and was greeted with partial flashing that got worse and worse as I finished creating the sim and moved back to neighborhood screen, placed the sim on the lot and saved and quit. I had been using the machine for hours and did some intensive photoshopping before I opened the game up so that likely had stored tons of crap in the standby memory before I even opened the game) so I'd say that the standby-memory-bug is still very much a problem in Windows 10, the stupid thing just refuses to release the memory when its needed and then games like Sims choke it up in no time. Now that it empties on its own I haven't had it clog up since then.
Mad Poster
#15 Old 17th Apr 2021 at 10:08 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 17th Apr 2021 at 10:28 PM.
Now that you mention it, I used to have a program that emptied the standby memory on the Vista computer. Can't remember the name of it, though, but it did seem to help a bit. I used to get pink-flashing but only after playing for quite a while (2-3 days of the game running, although I did let the game "rest" while I slept, moving the camera to an "empty" frame with no sims or furniture so the game didn't have to render anything to the screen), or when using heavy lots or after there had been snow on a lot for a while. It came on more gradually.

If you get immediate pink-flashing and have used the old GRM, there's a missing line that was fixed with the new version (this was my problem - I fixed the line just before the update came, thanks to someone mentioning it on Tumblr I think, and it worked).

I had the empty standby memory going for a while but then tried the DXVK which said to turn the list off, so I did that. Maybe it's an idea to turn the thing back on again, because it seems Windows 10 doesn''t manage memory at all.

Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#16 Old 18th Apr 2021 at 1:09 AM
Quote: Originally posted by foxmanic
I just recently had my game do the purple flashing thing and I panicked thinking that this was gonna be my life from now on before remembering that I never remembered to redo this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/...rs_on_creators/ when I moved on to this machine.

After doing the standby memory fix I tried everything to get it flashing purple again and so far haven't succeeded (when it happened all I did was load lot, remembered that actually I was supposed to add a sim to the family so I went back to neighborhood and from there to CAS and was greeted with partial flashing that got worse and worse as I finished creating the sim and moved back to neighborhood screen, placed the sim on the lot and saved and quit. I had been using the machine for hours and did some intensive photoshopping before I opened the game up so that likely had stored tons of crap in the standby memory before I even opened the game) so I'd say that the standby-memory-bug is still very much a problem in Windows 10, the stupid thing just refuses to release the memory when its needed and then games like Sims choke it up in no time. Now that it empties on its own I haven't had it clog up since then.


I do use the empty standby file. It hasn't helped so far.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#17 Old 18th Apr 2021 at 1:20 AM
Okay, latest development. I played the game for several hours without any problems. I went back and forth from home to several different community lots. However, I did save before leaving and upon returning each time (just in case!). Mentioning that in case it factors into anything. This was on a small apartment lot with 2 sims residing, and then invited a 3rd to move in. Maybe 3 hours of gameplay, no issues!

Next I opened up a family in Lake Young Townhomes (a huge and beautiful apartment lot ). Family of 3, with a child who invited another child home after school. Within 2 minutes the lot crashed.

Size of lot maybe a factor?
Mad Poster
#18 Old 18th Apr 2021 at 2:24 AM Last edited by simmer22 : 18th Apr 2021 at 2:34 AM.
If there are four separate apartments on that lot, the game moves in NPC sims to the empty apartments (unless you have mods to prevent it), plus the NPC landlord flying about, and walkbys/pets, so it could be your game is under a bit of stress when hit with a certain number of sims. 4x3 is a medium-sized lot, and it doesn't seem very extreme, but maybe apartments with 3-4 lots is too much for your game. Hard to tell, really. Only way to figure out is to test and see what works and not.

Could be regular residential lots work better, and perhaps add on some mods to restrict random pets and walkbys coming by all the time to reduce stress on the game.

Gotta do what you have to do if you want to play the game. My game had issues when it was snowing, so I turned weather off (except for photoshoots). For my ancient laptop I played without reflections and shadows (and also without shaders, but didn't know those existed at the time - won't turn them off for anything now, though). Still play without shadows (since a lot of people don't fix shadows for CC items, including me when I can't be bothered ).
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#19 Old 21st Apr 2021 at 5:57 PM
Default Big improvement!!
Another update! I promise I won't keep this thread going forever, I just want to get the latest developments in here in case it helps anyone else with a similar issue.

I stopped playing my regular neighborhood, which I was worried might be corrupted (mentioned in this post here) and started a brand new neighborhood I had downloaded but hadn't yet played. I noticed a significant decrease in crashing, although it still did once, but only after several hours of gameplay and visiting 4 community lots in a row - something that I could not do while playing the old neighborhood.

I realized if the old hood was not corrupted, the biggest difference b/w the old hood and the new one would be default replacement skins, hairs and clothing on custom townies. I like to create my own townies, and style them with custom items. The new hood did not have ANY custom-made townies, whereas the old hood ONLY had custom-made townies.

After that one crash, I removed the following:
- Default skinblends
- Default replacement hairs

Long story short, I haven't had any crashing since removing these items. Well, except once, when I exited the game. The game saved and then gave me the "application will now terminate" pop up, which was weird, but not a big deal.

I haven't playtested my old neighborhood yet, but I suspect multiple high-poly items on custom-made townies and spawning in the form of defaults on other townies was causing the crashing. This is something that was missed in the 50-50 test - maybe because when it was the only custom content being used it was fine, but combined with other CC, it's too heavy.

Sweet sweet relief! If anyone has a mysterious crashing problem despite using the 4GB patch, empty standby list, graphic rules maker, emptying your caches, and your downloads folder passing the 50-50 test, trying removing your default replacements alone. Even if you're not crazy about customizing every bloody townie, like I am, those things spawning on your regular townies might be the culprit, if I am correct in any of this.
Mad Poster
#20 Old 21st Apr 2021 at 6:53 PM
Can't say I'm too surprised. A lot of recent default replacements are high-poly or utilize 3t2/4t2 meshes and recolors, which are a bit higher poly and often use more textures and resources than TS2-based items.

A lot of people seem to mistakenly think that a default replacement means it's a lot better for the game, but I find you have less control over where it appears, since it can randomly spawn on a townie and suddenly lead to crashes without you be any the wiser as to why (when that sim tries to appear on a residential or community lot, or a sim grows up wearing that CC item, or you happen upon that item in the catalog). Besides, it's CC like any other CC item (if it didn't originally come with the game, it's CC), and the same rules kind of apply - if the computer struggles with high-poly or lots of textures or even borked CC, it doesn't matter much whether that CC is a default replacement or a regular custom CC item.

Personally I don't care about townies and let them run about in regular EAxis clothes and hair (I have some simple replacements and/or fixes, but all are based on the originals), and the only thing I've changed on all of them are default eyes and skin. Since I've never cared much about the townies and don't play with them anyway, it seems to reduce the load on the game a bit to not have them run around in high-poly and high-quality CC. If I ever wanted to pull one townie into gameplay, I could easily do a makeover on the spot (which I sometimes do if I need a few impromptu story extras for the background), but they go back to their EAxis look afterward.
Back to top