Hi guys!
So, earlier today I tried to start a legacy challenge in Appaloosa Plains, because I realized I hadn't actually played there that often. I had to scrap it after the game crashed to desktop 7 times in one day! The first 5 crashes all occurred while doing missions for the investigator professions, with crashes 1, 2, 3, and 5 all happening when my founder arrived at someone's house to search their mailbox and trashcan. After crash #5, I gave up on being an investigator, but the 4th, 6th, and 7th crashes all happened when I was switching from viewing a community lot to viewing my founder. I checked my documents folder for crash logs, and found 5 of them, with 3 of them saying the error was an access violation, and the other saying "arrays bounds exceeded." Now, it would be easy to say that it's because my laptop isn't up to snuff... but I have a save with my simself in Bridgeport, and it's only crashed twice in two real-time weeks, and that's with much longer sessions AND vanilla Bridgeport being infamously very bad performance wise! And in case it's something wrong with the investigator career, I managed to get it working in Twinbrook just fine. So what I want to know is why Appaloosa Plains is crashing so much, and what, if anything, I can do to fix it?

Also, in terms of mods, I have the Lazy Duchess's smooth patch, NRAAS Overwatch, Master Controller, and Error Trap, and Simler 90's core mod. Yes, I know that overwatch and simler90's core mod usually don't place nicely together, but I set Overwatch's alarm time to 5 a.m. to fix the conflict like this page suggests.

Oh, and here's my specs, along with part of the crash log for what I believe is the final crash (so a lot switching one)-

[System info]
Computer name: BUBBLES
Computer DNS name: Bubbles
User name: (my real name so nope)
EA_PLATFORM: Windows on X86
OS name: Windows Vista (Wait what? I use Windows 11???)
OS version number: 6.2.9200
OS service pack:
Debugger present: no
CPU count: 8
Processor type: x86
Processor level: 6
Processor revision: 35841
Memory load: 80%
Total physical memory: 7834 Mb
Available physical memory: 1537 Mb
Total page file memory: 13210 Mb
Available page file memory: 4259 Mb
Total virtual memory: 4095 Mb
Free virtual memory: 2061 Mb

[Application info]
Language: C++
Compiler: Microsoft Visual C++ compiler, version 1400
App path: C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3.exe
App version: 0.2.0.32

[Exception info]
date: 2024-06-13
time: 14.40.14
type: ARRAY_BOUNDS_EXCEEDED
address: 0x013f0cf6 <unknown module>

oh god it's spreading to Hidden Springs
Although with Hidden Springs, all 3 crashes are when I'm switching from focusing on a sim at home to a sim at a community lot.
This has to be a general problem of sims 3 using too much memory.

If I can't find a way to get this to stop crashing, I'll have to go back to Sims 2. I've never had it crash mid-session for me, and due to my playstyle, I've only had pink flashing ONCE, and that took me spawning like, 30 dead sims and turning them all into zombies.

This might sound odd but take out Error Trap and clear your caches and see if you have the same issue. Do you have CC installed besides mods to change the game like clothes, skins, or anything like that?

Hmm, maybe I could try removing Error Trap- I've already cleared out my caches. I also don't really have CC, unless you count store content. I did manage to stop the crashes (so far!) by turning my graphic settings to the bare minimum- most of it I can live with, but the grass texture being pretty much a flat green is downright painful... ah well, as long the game stops crashing!

I would start removing some of the mods 1 by 1 and clear your caches inbetween.

Haha, oopsie...

I figured out what the problem was...
Turns out that my graphics card didn't support DirectX9, and the strain of emulating it while rendering the game caused it to crash if I did anything remotely resource intensive...
I never suspected it was a problem with my graphics card, since I had set the game to recognize the graphics card, and once recognized, the game automatically set itself to decent graphics. Besides, the crash logs said "Access Violation," and from what I could tell from my google searches, I thought my laptop was running out of RAM! Anyways, I tried the solution in the link, and it hasn't crashed since.

All's well that ends well, I guess? Also, make sure to add this to the crashing guide, in case some poor idiot like me runs across the same issues as I do.