*Possibly resolved--Spontanious reboot

[Sleepycat]

well if you both want to see if the problem is caused by your huge Downloads folders (I have a kick @ss computer and I wouldn't play with that much custom content)

Just move your Downloads folder to your desktop and load the game, start a new hood (that way you won't mess up your main hoods) and play for a while see if you still have the rebooting problem.

[BeosBoxBoy]

usually this is caused by a fan dying or in the process of dying on the video card or the CPU.  Check both with the bonnet of the case if it is a tower system - if they both turn freely and are spic-and-span clean -- then it may be something far darker (like a heat fractured motherboard, dying hard drive, bad RAM, etc.

[karialSim]

Oh crap, that sounds scary. But I will check it out.

btw, I just tried running the game again, and still the same crapola. It just gives different numbers or whatnot.

*well, I got the idea to try it in a different drive.......and thought for a little while that it fixed the problem. I played for maybe 20-30 minutes, but then it rebooted on me. Gawd I want to cry and scream and throw things. I'm ready to sell my darn soul here.

[karialSim]

It seems as though the problem is somewhere in my files, because the problem didn't happen playing on a totally clean (no custom content whatsoever) game. So now I just have to search the problem out.

*edit. Ok, that isn't the problem. It is a device driver error. So hopefully I can get it fixed now.

[karialSim]

Well it seems that the problem IS somewhere in my downloads. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game today, and then played for a little while before putting any custom stuff in. No problems. So I began adding a little at a time and testing. I'm not exactly sure yet where the problem is, but I have found a few probabilities. It has only crashed twice today, and the first time I seem to have gotten rid of whatever was causing it. The second time I'm not sure yet. I haven't tested again yet after removing a few things. Time to come back to it tomorrow refreshed. LOL

Just a few minutes ago though, it occured to me to get the updated CEP. So maybe that will help too. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow I will have it fixed and can at least give a general idea of how or why.

[karialSim]

My problem is possibly resolved, but more likely just a temp fix. Anyway, I added 1.5GB of ram to my computer, and was able to play yesterday for 5 hours without crashing.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Karial - this is going to sound a little stupid, but I assume you have all the EPs, Stuff Packs, and a bunch of gigabytes of downloads, right?  EVerything I read on the Maxis/EA site says 512 MB of RAM should be sufficient, but I have never been able to get the game to do little better than crawl with 256-512 MB of RAM.  The install of base game with all eps and stuff packs  is close to 7 gigabytes, and that seems like a LOT to be riding on 512 MB of RAM, so I really don't know where Maxis/EA is buying their test computers, but I sure want one.

[wiccadwitch]

My problem is possibly resolved, but more likely just a temp fix. Anyway, I added 1.5GB of ram to my computer, and was able to play yesterday for 5 hours without crashing.

Thats really good news for you Karial, and I think I fixed my problem the same way. Well sorta anyway. My husband got me new comp parts for both Christmas and then my birthday(which isnt quite here yet but I couldn't wait to put my new system together until the 10th) so I just upgraded my entire system. Besides having 2 gigs of dual channel ddr2 ram I am also running an AMD dual core 4600+ processor and an ATI radeon x1300 XGE vid card with 512 ram all sitting pretty on an MSI K9A platinum mainboard. My game runs without a hitch now. Still a bit slow to load but game play is smooth and fast. Once past the initial loading of the game neighborhoods, CAS, and lots all load pretty quickly and best of all no crashes since the upgrade. Currently I have been going through my content and trying to delete stuff just because there is new stuff I want to put in and I am forcing myself to get rid of at least a gig of content before I am allowed.