Can't Play After Installing Pets/Game Crashes

[Jessieg154]

I have tried to solve this problem by chatting with EA Costumer Service repeatedly and they have been no help at all. Ever since I installed Pets, my game keeps crashing, and now I can no longer play at all. I have tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the game several times, I have removed all content and saved games, uninstalled, reinstalled and upgraded my graphics drivers, deleted windows temp files, disconnected from the internet, shut down firewall and virus software and disabled full screen, all of which were suggested by EA, and nothing works. At first the game was only crashing if I created a family with pets. Now it crashes no matter which family or neighborhood I use. I can create sims and houses, but as soon as the clock hits about 8:10 on the first day, the game crashes. Anyone else have any suggestions, or similar problems?

[Frey]

This is a common issue since Pets was released. These are the 2 things I did to solve it:

1. Change your computer's DEP settings. Go to Control Panel, then click on System, Avdanced Settings, Performance, Data Execution Prevention (DEP). It will probably ask you for permission to do this. Once you're there, change the DEP settings to "Activate DEP for all programs except those I select", and click on Add. There you have to go to C:\Program files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin and select the .exe file (mine is called TS3W). For adding the .exe files from your expansion packs, it's the same: C:\Program files\Electronic Arts\Sims 3 Pets\Game\Bin\TS3EP05, and so on. This will keep Windows from closing The Sims.

2. Doing a factory reset, following Moonsareblue's great instructions here: http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,7507.0.html. Since you already uninstalled and reinstalled your game this is probably unnecessary, but who knows.

The DEP settings thing works for most people, at least from what I've read on the internet, and they never have the issue again. In my case, my game is still crashing from time to time, but it gives me about an hour of gameplay before it does, so it's definitely better than before. Anyway... hope this helps