I'm not entirely sure if someone has already done this, or if I'm in the right place, but because this problem is so utterly frustrating I thought I'd post a reply to say how I seemed to almost solve The Sims 2 crashing on Vista.
Firstly, these are my specs:
Laptop - Dell Inspiron 1525
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU @ 2.00GHz
Ram: 2.00 GB
32-bit Operating System
Vista Home Premium!
Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family
This is for having The Sims 2 ONLY installed, no expansion packs as of yet. Install the game, right-click on the game icon on the desktop, select properties and once there click on 'compatibility'.
Select 'Run this program in compatibility for..' and select 'Windows Server 2003 (Service Pack 1)' granted you have this option in the list (you should). If not, select 'Windows XP' - either one seems to work.
Then, put a check in ALL of these boxes below:
- Run in 256 Colours
- Disable Visual Themes
- Disable Desktop Composition
- Disable display scaling on high DPI settings
So every box has a check. Then you can try to run the game as administrator, but I have found the game to work whether I do this or not (although I am the primary account).
I tend to switch between XP compatibility and Windows Server 2003 to see if there is a difference on game startup, there doesn't seem to be, the same goes for running as administrator.
If you have managed to get the game going at this point you may have to try a few times), at the neighbourhood screen go to options and change the visual/graphics options so that everything is either really low or 'off' altogether (eg. shadows). This helps performance.
You can also press SHIFT + CTRL + C to bring up the console/cheat box and type this: 'vsync off' (without inverted commas, obviously)
This also improves game performance.
The sims will appear blocky - but there's barely any difference with the graphics set low to running the game with the graphics high.
Now, I'm not saying I have completely solved the problem - the game seems to run when it wants to, yet it works more often than it crashes. But it does still crash. However, I have had many hours of gameplay with this method - the game even saves properly - I recommend you save often. It is worth having this than having no game at all!
Hope this helps someone.
Oh, forgot to add, I also went to The Sims website and downloaded the patch recommended for Vista - if you go to the help menu on the site and select 'Patches', I believe it's the first (either 'CD' or 'DVD', it doesn't matter). I did this immediately after installation.
