I installed the Pets expansion pack in TS3 but it keeps crashing.

spankenstein89

I wasn't having many technical problems until I installed Pets but now it crashes within 10 minutes of loading.
I only have Ambitions and Pets loaded.
I have 8 GB of ram so that should be enough, so I'm wondering what might be happening here.
Thanks.

popstarsley

Oh noooo! That’s the pack that originally ended my run with TS3. Everytime a horse ran by, the game would crash 😭😭😭😭

igazor

Pets is by far the heaviest hitting TS3 EP, Seasons would be second. It typically takes more than just sufficient RAM to run well. Can we get the rest of the specs on this computer?

If you could, please run a full dxdiag report, send it up to Pastebin (the free version is fine), and provide a link here so we can read it. Even if your system's specs are all strong enough, the report might point out other things that can be addressed to help the pack run better.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information

spankenstein89

popstarsley wrote: »

Oh noooo! That’s the pack that originally ended my run with TS3. Everytime a horse ran by, the game would crash 😭😭😭😭

I'm sorry to hear that Popstarsley. I've learned since my first post that playing with Appaloosa Plains is causing my computer problems. I still have Pets loaded, but I'm playing in a smaller town and I'm having less problems now. It's still a bit laggy, but it's not crashing anymore.

spankenstein89

igazor wrote: »

Pets is by far the heaviest hitting TS3 EP, Seasons would be second. It typically takes more than just sufficient RAM to run well. Can we get the rest of the specs on this computer?

If you could, please run a full dxdiag report, send it up to Pastebin (the free version is fine), and provide a link here so we can read it. Even if your system's specs are all strong enough, the report might point out other things that can be addressed to help the pack run better.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information

Thanks Igazor, I'll try that and see what I get.

spankenstein89

The rest of the specs are an i5 2400s CPU at 2.5Ghz with integrated graphics.

igazor

I guess that means we aren't going to get to read the dxdiag report? Uhm, okay...

The heavier EPs, and again Pets is the heaviest of all of them, practically demand a dedicated graphics card of sufficient strength to function well. Among other things, the rendering of animal fur, even if you don't have any animals around that are particularly fluffy, is likely going to be too much for integrated graphics to handle. You might try turning all of your graphics settings in Game Options down to the absolute minimum and switch off Advanced Rendering to see how the game behaves (it will look awful most likely, but the point would be to see if it runs without crashing every few minutes) and then maybe if successful increase a setting or two a little at a time until the game looks fun enough to play again.

To relieve stress on the game, play in offline mode (meaning don't login at the Launcher or in-game levels), switch off the in-game TS3 Store shopping experience, the interactive hidden object startup game, and scrapbook memories.

And you might try pulling out your entire TS3 user game folder from Documents and set it aside for safekeeping. The game will spawn a new game folder for you with no added content or saves in it, but those will still be safe back in the pulled out folder. Then see how a new test game with no added content runs in a known to be gentle to play world like Sunset Valley, Twinbrook, or Riverview -- not Appaloosa but only because I would expect it to have or draw in too many animals from the very beginning.

Hope some of this helps, but there may not actually be any magical types of solutions on integrated graphics.

spankenstein89

Thanks Igazor, I appreciate your help. I understand the limitations of not having a dedicated graphics card. I'll try turning my graphics setting down and switching off Advanced Rendering to see if it runs better. I already have switched off shopping, the interactive startup game and memories. Pulling out my TS3 folder sounds like a good idea, I'll give that a try to. Thanks. The crashing problem only happens when I'm playing Appaloosa Plains, probably because there's too many animals. I'm doing better with a small town with no animals in it yet.
Thanks again for your help.

spankenstein89

The dxdiag report came back with no problems.

---

System Information

---

Time of this report: 9/11/2020, 19:06:10
Machine name: CRUD
Machine Id: {0CBAE796-68AE-4766-9AE4-C291B5E3F974}
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 18363) (18362.19h1_release.190318-1202)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
System Model: HP Compaq 8200 Elite USDT PC
BIOS: Default System BIOS (type: BIOS)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400S CPU @ 2.50GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.5GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8080MB RAM
Page File: 6627MB used, 2732MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
Miracast: Not Available
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported
DirectX Database Version: Unknown
DxDiag Version: 10.00.18362.0387 64bit Unicode

---

DxDiag Notes

---

Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 2: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.

igazor

The point of the dxdiag is not to find and fix problems (on its own), it's to give us a detailed summary of your system's hardware and device drivers so we can help spot things that can be adjusted/fixed if there are any, and to get a better sense of its probable limits. The full report would be much longer than that which is why Pastebin is usually selected otherwise it cant take up to 8 message posts to fit it all in.

But if you are happy with the game's performance in other worlds and with things scaled back, then maybe we don't really need to go any further right away.

spankenstein89

Okay I'll use Pastebin next time. And yes I'm happy for now, we don't need to get into this further. Thanks. I appreciate that you take the time for helping people out. It's very good of you.

spankenstein89

Hey Popstarsley, I hope you give TS3 another chance!