Hard drive borken!
Hi guys… there won’t be an update for a bit (well there might be one, I have something I was planning to use in a few posts but I could step it up sooner) because my stupid hard drive has kicked the bucket again. We only got it like three months ago! Arg! So annoying! Luckily I had backed up fairly recently, and I managed to at least get the latest version of the Mhalwae neighbourhood. Do you guys know if it is enough just to have that and then merge it with the older backup or will that cause problems. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my downloads folder but I don’t think there was that much new stuff (although I had organised and done the genetics for all the Barcelonista eyes so it will be a pain to do that again). But really, I’m not complaining, at least I could get the important stuff. I can’t believe it broke again. And in the same spot too because it was only making that dire clicking when I was playing the sims, and then when I was trying to backup my sims files (and last time it broke in the sims playing area too). I must be wearing a hole in all these hard drives with too much sims playing. Meh.
I guess it is a good excuse to get the new EP since I will have to reinstall the whole ruddy lot of them anyway (I had been avoiding it because I didn’t want the major hassle I usually get with reinstalling the sims). I can never get the new EP working straight up and it is always inevitable for me that I will have to do a full reinstall. So at least I will get swimmable beaches and big forest trees in return for the broken hard drive suffering.
Nooooooo! At least you have backups. You remind me to do another backup today. I have 2 computers so that’s good, but I keep thinking “What if there’s a fire or an earthquake or asteroid and both are destroyed??”
If you have the entire N004 folder or whatever number it is (Lothere is N004 *bats eyelashes*), you should be OK I think. Assuming you have approximately the same CC on an older backup. Usual caveats of keeping a copy *outside* of the game directory while you’re testing apply. I.e. don’t move the neighborhood folder into the Sims folder, just make a copy, since playing it can bork your neighborhood.
That is soooo spooky that your HD broke in the same spot, though. I’m not sure that it actually reads the game folders once the game is loaded however. My impression (which may only be voodoo superstition) is that it loads the entire stinking Sims folder into memory, and if you don’t have enough RAM, it just uses the swap file. Probably Sims-playing is one of the few times in your day-to-day computing experience where you will run out of RAM and start swapping to disk. HDs aren’t supposed to die after 3 months, but they’re one of those things that seems to either die right away or last for years and years. Like coffee makers. Don’t ask me about coffee makers.
I am afraid if you get the new EP it will only be a matter of time before I get it too.
Tiana is already tempting me with forests. And I still think you could use beaches. If things keep up the way they’re going in my story, so will I.
Ooo I have to go back up my sims now too! I think it will be ok to copy your neighborhood file in so long as you have the same expansion packs installed as you did before. DO NOT install the new one THEN transfer your old files over or else you WILL lose stuff. I’ve done it before and it made me a sad panda! Install the same ones you had when it crashed, move your files over, then install the new EP. When I installed the new EP it didn’t mess my game up at all so it should be ok. And more RAM definitely helps. I have 2 gigs, its a lot but my game runs smoothly and doesn’t die, usually unless I do something messed up outside of it…like download illegal exe files, so its worth it. And a gig of ram doesn’t even cost very much like 60 bucks if you get it off of Newegg.com. I hope this helps!
Oh no!. I can relate to you with computer problems. The computer I’m on has been having problems since round about a year after I got it and it’s acting up again. Everyday it will suddenly switch to a dark blue screen with something at the bottom about dumping memory and since I have no idea whether that’s a good or bad thing I switch it off by the switches and I have to turn it on again.
Anyway I hope you can get it fixed and be able to play sims again.
See ya.
Hehe… Mhalwae is N0011 I think. I have way too many useless unplayed neighbourhoods hanging around. I am really good at starting, character creation and what-not but then when it gets down to playing I get really bored with the beginning part where you are trying to scrounge together enough money to buy a couch. So I move on. Which is why I don’t play any more
I think I backed up the whole thing relatively recently, ie just after I made Nyawe (I thought she was too pretty to lose) so the CC shouldn’t be too different.
Stupid hard drive. Being non-technologically advanced I had to ask my boyf exactly how this swap-file thing works and he said excitedly that he had been thinking the same thing. So I guess you are both onto something
. But why does it have to load the whole thing? Couldn’t it just access the parts that it needs while you are playing. Is that why it takes an age to load the damn thing. Seriously, it takes about 15minutes or something stupid when I want to change to a different lot ( I have waaay too much CC. Heaps of ugly dresses and stuff I don’t even know why I downloaded in the first place). I have to have a book beside me to read so I don’t get bored waiting.
You could definitely use a beach for Sigi and Eirik’s island. I would love to see a scene where she wades into the water to meet him, especially now
. And beaches… I would love swimmable beaches so much. *sigh* and I guess now I have to re-download simPE and stuff anyway so it seems like a good time.
Thanks for the advice you guys btw. I will definitely keep a copy of my sims elsewhere. I got so panicky that having a copy on my external hard drive wasn’t enough, so I actually have three separate copies of my backup now in various place. I need to put one at work in case of the fire though. And there was a fire in the building opposite me the other day! Someone’s whole room got burnt. Eeek! Apparently someone started it on purpose… double eeek!
Wow Pandora… that sounds like a rather not good problem. Nothing is worse than the blue screen of death. Does it work again properly when you switch it on again… I often get a message saying that the virtual memory is getting low and that it is increasing… actually is that the switching thing? But a memory dump is different right… that is a total crash. And memory dump sounds so scary too
Although sometimes I wish I had that function. When you do something embarrassing or something bad happens wouldn’t it be nice to just have a memory dump.
Hi. yeah it does work normally afterwards but it’s so annoying because at the moment since I’ve put a new cartidge in the printer everytime I go on the computer this notice pops up telling me to align it. even though I already aligned the stupid thing about ten times already and if I do anything else before that notice comes up it slows the computer down even more!.
I haven’t had the blue screen for a few days I’m hoping it doesn’t happen today. Yeah I’ve had the virtual memory is low message before I never have it too often so that’s good.
Yeah I agree with you a memory dump would sure come in handy sometimes lol!.
Keep Simmng!.
See ya.
Oh you have to love a man who gets excited about swap files!
I do think it loads almost the whole game into memory when it starts. That makes it easier on the programmers, who can just load all your objects etc. from memory and not have to constantly read files from your Downloads directory as CC is needed.
(Also I think they are kind of obliged to load everything at some point, so they can match up textures to their meshes and so forth.)
But “memory” is a sneaky term, since everything that doesn’t fit into RAM goes onto disk in the swap file. That’s why they call it “virtual memory”.
If you are getting messages that you don’t have enough virtual memory and it is increasing the size of your swap file for you, you should manually increase the size of your swap file once and for all. Ask swap-loving BF to do it for you. That message means that not only do you not have enough RAM, but you have so much stuff in memory that even your swap file + RAM isn’t enough to hold it. The danger there is that when it automatically increases the size for you, right when you’re in the middle of playing, there is a small chance the game will crash because some attempt to read from memory will fail.
A good trick is to open your Task Manager after you are done with a long playing session and check out the “Performance” tab and look at “Commit Charge (K)” and read the “Peak” number there. That is the highest amount of virtual memory (in kilobytes) you used at any one time. Make sure your swap file is bigger than that size and you shouldn’t see that message any longer.
Or, if you have a little extra $$ hanging around (Or Euros or whatever they use in Sweden!) just BUY SOME RAM! Your game should run so much faster then. I have the same problem (only 512MB), but I am so afraid that if I add more RAM then I will be forced to buy a new video card to get the same image quality.
(Don’t ask.)
Another trick I found — as my lot loading times started stretching out into 20 minutes — was to break up my neighborhood into tons of downtowns.
Unfortunately this meant moving lots, and AFAIK there is no way to move a lot between “towns” without losing all the furniture and stuff. So I did a little of that, which meant some redecoration work, and I am also rebuilding a number of my castles lately to make them more castle-like, so I just scrapped the originals.
It’s been a lot of building work for me, but I have found that it takes less time to exit a lot into a nearly-empty downtown, change to another nearly-empty downtown, and load another lot, than it does to go to a full neighborhod to switch between lots.
So if you are ever going to add a new lot and don’t need it to be visible from nearby lots, you might give that a try. I try to visit my main “Lothere” neighborhood as little as possible these days. I have a downtown for Sigefrith’s castle and environs, a downtown for Bernwald, a downtown for Raegiming, a downtown for Scotland, a downtown for the Isle of Man, a downtown for Ireland (coming up!), etc.
A memory dump is not in itself a bad thing… it just means something went so terribly wrong that the program can’t keep from crashing, but it will kindly print out the contents of its memory so that if you happen to be one of the five or six people who worked on the program and have a debugger set up and can read binary opcodes and register values, then you can figure out why the program crashed. Yay!
But it would be cool in real life, because then if you ever catastrophically fucked up, you could at least take a look at the contents of your brain at that second in time and figure out what the hell you were thinking.
We also apparantely have the more RAM – graphics card problem. Although we are starting to think about getting a new one and doing a general upgrade of the computer. It would be really nice not to have such long waiting times for loading. Your idea about splitting up the neighbourhoods is a really good one. I am going to start doing that. I think also I should try and get rid of some of my mass of custom content. It is just getting stupid now, I have that many things that I never use at all. But it is a mega pain in the bum to try and sort through it all, it is so disorganised.
I will also try increasing the size of my swap-file (hehe… I will ask the swap-loving boyf
Thanks very much for the advice and sorry for not responding sooner.
A memory dump in real life would be an excellent idea. Actually I don’t know if you have read Harry Potter, but it reminds me of the pensieve, which is basically a big basin where you can put memories you pull out of your head to check out later. I really need that, I have trouble keeping everything in. Well… everything I want, it seems that somehow, without my permission, I remember the lyrics to almost every Britney Spears song. Ugh!
Oh yeah, and they have Swedish Crowns (kroner) in Sweden. They joined the EU but they didn’t go for the euro.