Oh my God, I love the Sims so much and I've been playing since the original (it's the only thing that feeds my God complex), but with Sims 3 I'll get like a day of game play, and the next time I load my game there is some sort of bug, or error, its soooo annoying.
I started my game today, and it gave me this "a serious error has occurred while loading..." , and the last time it did this I had to manually unlock all the files. It worked, but when I saved I got error 15 (I've gotten error 12 and 16 before, but this one is new) . Exit out, run game as administrator..."a serious error has occurred while loading..."
...
unlock with CCollomb's Unlocker, this time it corrupts my saves . Okay... load back up saves, game crashes to desktop, run as administrator, "a serious error has occurred while loading..." I just can't win. I loves these games so much, but being a college student I don't have a lot of free time on my hands, so I find it so annoying that I have to spend hours pleading with the entity possessing my Sims 3 to let me play! I thought about buying the Sims 4 when it came out, but then I thought how I can never get the sims 3 to run, and well...
I just don't know what to do anymore. Maybe I'll go back to the handheld Sims games; less technical problems. Anyone else ever feel this way?

My game runs well too most of the time, Error 12 is the only error I get, really (save for the CTD once in a blue moon).
My biggest issue is having to customize a town before actually playing it. It's not unusual to spend 2-3 IRL days setting it up...

Sims 3 runs smoothly for me, with all EP's and SP's + store content + CC + CAW. Can't complain, really. Of course, for most parts we have Twallan to thank for that.

"Fixing it more than playing it" applied to my Sims 2 experience. (I loved the game enough to put up with it.)

Right now it is my experience with TS3 the whole time. I have a lot of plans to build my world. But it has been slowed so much by constant Error 12 or crash to desktop. No matter what I tried, Error 12 is my favor of the week now.

Not since the last patch. I occasionally check if any mods have any minor updates, or if there any new mods that might be useful, rearrange my CC sets in CCMagic a bit, download a few things, but that's it.

I play a lot more since the game has finished its cycle and TS4 was released.

Now I can focus on playing instead of throwing things because the latest patch breaks mods or the whole bloody game. So, probably, even if I liked TS4, I wouldn't get it until it's done. I've gone through this constant patching and EP idiocy with TS3 for 4 years, not ever again.

Having said that, I learned a lot about computers while figuring out what the best and still cost-effective solution to play TS3 was.

I did have to spend more time fixing the game than playing in the early days and patches would break Mods so I was forced to wait for Mods to be updated before patching.I'm actually playing more now and only have to spend time fixing my Mod settings for story progression when I start a game.

I have no problemos. I only use Twallan's suite plus a few carefully selected mods from highly reputable modders. No game crashes, no corruptions. It's all good.

Nah. Awesomemod just works for me.

When I'm just playing, I have no problems but when I go on my downloading sprees and throw a bunch of cc into my game without doing my due diligence first, I can sometimes run into problems. Luckily CC magic makes the whole experience so much easier and better organised, I can figure out who the problem child is, kill it and then continue playing happily. I have to say that I've had way less CTDs with TS3 than with TS2.

I used to spend a lot of time "fixing" but for the love of the game convinced myself that troubleshooting and fixing was part of playing but once EA stopped making EP's and subsequent patches the updated mods (NRaas) I learned to use took over and my games is working the way I want it to work....very few problems now.

I know I've put this document out several times but incase you have not seen it there might be some tips in Tips For Better Game Performance that might help you out.

Don't give up and good luck

My game runs wonderfully well. The only thing that I keep trying to fix are looking for ways to save the game after using the "buydebug" cheat (I got this to work a couple times - I can't remember them anymore) and getting Eye replacements to work (it seemed that I have to keep making a new game - but not necessarily saving it so you can go back to your own save file afterwards).

I don't think I could of lasted this long without Twallan and his tips.

I feel very uninspired to play sims everytime I have to deal with mods or/and possible errors they cause. I just spend three or so hours to trying to fix the store bakery set glitch which occured because they were in package. form.

Thanks to ErrorTrap my game hasn't crashed once since I installed it.

I am glad to hear most of you have smooth gaming. For me, I have just spent the fifth time today doing the same thing because the game crashed to desktop (Sims 3 stops working error) or Error 12. And before you quickly jump into conclusion that I did nothing to optimize my mods, I have done all there is to be done. And yes, my RAM is 16Gb not 2Gb like most of you assume. Yep, I am sad to say I spend more time fixing than playing. Actually the fixing itself is my game for the last 6 months.

tomomi I was somewhat sure than "fixing and destroying" the game is an essential part of Sims (any number) gaming experience in fact

This is my gaming habit nowadays. I spend more time tinkering around with the technical aspect of a game, than actually playing. And though some may find this tedious, I find it more fun tinkering around than actually playing a game. I am weird.

This happened the last 2 hours: I spent going through 3-4 households trying to clear out Sloppy Jalopy cars they kept buying (despite they already have their favorite bicycles). I did what was suggested on NRAAS to prevent sims to buy new cars by setting the minimum fund required to something like 2 millions. But I kept seeing them driving Sloppy Jalopy. And after a few switches ... TS3 crashed to desktop. Another 15 min to load ... redoing some ..... more households have Jalopy cars ... and about 3 other cars in inventories. So after I dealt with the "constant cooking new meals without eating left over", after the downloaded fix, they start to hoard cars instead.

And more crashes and Error 12 ... You tell me, is this how TS3 is meant to be played?

what are your Traffic settings? Sims are able to produce cheap cars from the air if they need 'em (once I caught a NPC sim with a new car who already has got three in its inventory - bugs tends to accumulate).

Maybe it's time to look for greener pastures? I mean - pack the family and move to another town? (Even the same but refreshed and clean) Something may be broken within the world and not worth to attempt to repair at this stage.

The map is Notchcliff Isle, it's already a medium map. The town is quite new. Traffic setting is ... Delta -25, 2 Food truck, 1 Icecream truck. It's not even the NPC I worry about, but my playable households. And it somehow ignores NRAAS SP setting on purchasing new cars.

Thing is, I have a very powerful computer with a lot of RAM, yet I can't handle a medium map with 10 households. Should I go to a small map with 3 households? Is this a solution? It's like buying a Ferrari to drive 10mph.

no matter how powerful machine you have, the sims will show you it's lame And more power may mean bigger problem, because power hides corruption - lol it looks like a political manifesto... On weaker machine you'll probably run into problems faster and in more clear way.

Anyway - I have outdated, rather "bugdet-like" laptop and it's able to handle a city with about 100 residents. It's rather slow, laggy in certain areas, but it works. The world you're playing (there're plenty of apartaments as I can see, also roads on the pictures are uneven somewhere, spawners are placed rather loosely...) may be a problem itself, how many errors it produces in a daily routine? Nevermind.

According to problem with sims ignoring your settings the people of the Nraas are much more competent to answer I believe. And about the Traffic I wonder if you disabled NPC ability to travel by cabs - if they're allowed they shouldn't be so urgent to buying cars/bikes.

And you know - breaking and fixing is like restoring the childhood - like these days when we dismantled grandpa's precious watch with curiosity of "what's inside?" or something like that

Nope, not disabling cabs. In fact I do like cabs (just not 10,000 of them). Maybe it is time to put everything back on Stasis.

Sigh, just crashed to desktop twice in the last 20 minutes. It's not specific to an area, just random, as if the game "overloads". TS3 is playing on a very very thin thread.

I used to having trouble with TS3 regurarly. Making me to start over often. But now since the last patch and with the experience I had with troubleshooting TS3, I rarely have problems. NRAAS mods and ellacharmed's neighbourhoods with fixed routing, prevent a lot of issues I used to have with TS3. Now only bad CC cause me sometimes problems. But because I never add new CC to bigger packages right away, it is easy to find the culprit and fix it.

But still, I have a love &hate relationship with TS3. I think it is a lot of work to create a fresh install that works smoothly. Because the ep's take ages to install and on top of that you need to follow this procedure with the fixed neighbourhoods and installing mods. The frustating thing about this, is that EA should have fixed all this. So sometimes even when I feel like playing the sims, I still won't because it is such a drag to set up when it isn't installed.

I spent what must have amounted to a whole year fixing one problem after another with the game, if it hadn't been all the helpful people on MTS I'd have given up in despair. It was partly my own fault really, since every time I had things working just the way I wanted, I'd come across some new mod or bit of CC and think 'Oh yeah, I must have that!', and everything would get messed up again. As for Nraas mods, I don't know how I'd survive without them.