Hey guys,

So I recently purchased a gaming laptop with 32GB RAM and 256GB in total storage. I downloaded Origin and then The Sims 3, including all of the Expansion Packs, and the Stuff Pack 'Town Life Stuff' directly to the computer. The old save file has an --admittedly-- MASSIVE active household, in both family member size (roughly fifty to sixty sims in the house, off the top of my head, ranging from humans to plumbots to pets) and actual household size (a 64x64 lot with almost all possible levels from basement to above-ground, full appliances, furniture, and decor in every room), as well as content from every EP and a bunch of custom content I've downloaded off the internet (some of it from the Sims 3 Store) and mods that I've collected, many from NRAAS but many more aren't. Anyway, my game was basically unplayable on my old laptop because it didn't have enough memory for the game itself and only had 4GB of RAM. So I thought getting a faster computer with more memory would help fix things. Unfortunately, the game crashes without fail after almost every launch, and when it doesn't I get Error Code 12 when I try to save the game. When I try to Reset Everything using NRAAS' Master Controller Mod on the Town, the game crashes. If I try to reset my own household, the game crashes. If I try and save a copy of my household to the Library so I can try moving them to another town (I saw online that this would fix Error Code 12), the game crashes. I installed the Crash Log Analyzer hoping that could tell me how to fix my problem, and it told me the cause of the crashes was due to Max Memory Usage. I keep the in-game graphics at an absolute minimum, and I regularly clean my save file with S3PE, so I did some digging and the crash log combined with internet research led me to believe that I was experiencing Large Address Aware (LAA) issues and to download the Large Address Aware App to help fix the problem. I did, and changed TS3 applications with that app, but the crashing is still happening. Can anyone help me figure out why and how to fix it? If the answer is I simply have to downsize then I will, but these are problems I've had for quite a while now. Is there any way to force the Sims 3 to use more than 4GB of RAM? Increasing the pagefile and changing the Sims default memory usage from 2GB to 8GB or 16 GB didn't seem to help either. I will attach photos of my system information, the most recent crash log, the mods I have, installed custom content, and anything else I think might be helpful. If there's anything else I can upload to help shed light on my problem then just say so.

TS3 is a 32-bit application. EA never made a 64-bit version for Windows. It can use no more than just under 4 GB of RAM, the actual max limit is 3.7 GB due to some overhead. A single microsecond spike into the Danger Zone, which for most of us is around 3.5 GB or so, will always cause the game to Error12 upon trying to save or otherwise lose its mind. We can't do this with 32-bit apps, it's like trying to do 16-digit math on an 8-digit calculator. If you can suppress the overflow errors, all you get is nonsense in return.

So the answer is to take some Task Manager readings of the game's RAM usage at startup and frequently throughout gameplay and scale things back down so this doesn't happen. The goal is to use a little RAM as possible, meaning less than 3.5 or 3 GB, while still having a satisfactory gameplay experience. I don't know of anyone who can play households with that many sims in them without things like this happening. The higher household size limits that the mods provide allow us to happily play households of 12 or 15 sims if we wish, some can take that a bit further if they sacrifice a few other things like lot size, furnishings, and maybe the high graphics settings in Game Options, but not 50 or 60 sims.

The game is already Large Address Aware as of Patch 1.17 so making it so again is redundant. There is no way to change its memory usage limit, the setting you found on that ini file is for the game's script heap, which is 20 GB (not 2 GB) by default and on purpose.

I do strongly suggest you get rid of SimsMX's Hospital Overhaul mod. It was never updated for usage beyond Patch 1.55 and is known to break games on current patch levels. You have a small number of other mods I would similarly be concerned about, but am not as sure about them.

Okay so I have NRAAS Debug Enabler installed, and a I would be satisfied with having quite a few of them around the home lot if not being apart of the actual household. Would making them NPCs help with reducing memory usage or would I have to actively remove them from the household?

I just tried to make lots of my plumbots service sims using NRAAS' Master Controller, which removes them from my household, effectively cutting my household size in half. I kept Task Manager open to monitor memory usage during the game, as you suggested, and while memory usage never went higher than 3.5 GB I still constantly got Error Code 12.

One of the problems here is that your active household has 60 sims in it. You may be exceeding allowable resources just by getting the game started, before you even notice. Once this happens, a game session is toast and reducing its resource usage later on doesn't help that session.

Try this, if you could. In the built in Game Options, reduce every single setting the the bare ugly minimum, and turn off Advanced Rendering. The game will look ridiculously bad that way probably compared to what it usually looks like, but this is meant to be temporary. Be sure to be offline (not logged in) at the Launcher and in-game levels, the in-game TS3 Store shopping experience switched off, Scrapbook memories off, the Hidden Object startup game off (again, these are all Game Options), story progression off (pull the NRaas SP mod and the MC Progression module out entirely for now). The point of all of this being to reduce the load on RAM.

Startup your saved game, let the game clock run for a few sim minutes and see if you can do a Save As without really having changed anything. If so, use MC's Add Sim to force let's say 5 of your active household into a household of their own on another lot for now, it can be an empty 10x10 doesn't matter. Then see if you can do another Save As. Repeat with 5 more sims forcing them into a household on a different lot, Save As, etc. until your Active household is down to something more like 15 or 20. If you can get through all of this, then you can begin putting your game back together in a more normal looking environment and hopefully without the impossible to load/save household.

If that still doesn't get you anywhere, then we have to talk about temporarily removing all of your mods except for a minimal helpful set like NRaas ErrorTrap, Overwatch, Register, Traffic, Selector, Traveler, MasterController, MC Cheats and Integration, and try again. And then we would have to consider the impact of that active 64x64 lot, that can't be helping things either.

The thing I'd want to save the most is my lot. I can rebuild my family from scratch, but the lot took tons of time and even if its super inconvenient to play I'd like to try and save it. I think I have my games old library files on my old computer, if the lot is there I'll just make a new game and start a new family. While I was waiting for you to reply last time my game crashed again, it probably won't make a difference but I'll upload the latest crash log for you to peruse. I'll try your suggestions and see if that helps.