Yesterday my VF game was running perfect. I shut the game down last night, it shut down with no problems (so should not be a corrupted file). I also shut my laptop down. Tonight I restarted my laptop, accessed my VF game, shut it down to go do something. When I returned I tried to restart it. It opens the main page, progress bar loads to halfway, then it shuts down and I get the virtualfamilies.exe has stopped working. After that message I get the following message that I took a screen shot of. I have not had any laptop freezes, nor has the power went out and the game has not crashed. Any ideas on what the cause of this is and how it can be fixed? Thanks!

Do you have Windows Vista? If so, it sounds like it's Vista's DEP at work (Data Execution Prevention). Here's how to fix it:

Yes, I have Windows Vista. I went in and disabled the DEP for the game, restarted the pc, tried to restart the game and am getting the same error.

Right click on the exe file, and select "Run as Administrator".

That seemed to work, but somehow some of my mods have now disappeared so I will have to redo those. Will I need to click run as admin everytime I open the game now?

No, once you have that set, it shouldn't ask you again.

Great! Thanks so much for your help! I was concerned I would have to reinstall the entire game again. Happy 4th!

Spoke to soon. It's back to doing the same thing again. Getting the same error, even after trying to run as admin. Why did it work the 1st time and now it won't again? Grr. This is driving me CRAZY!

Try removing that DEP setting. It seems like I had the same issue with Plant Tycoon a while back.

I'm going to bed now, but I'll check the forums in the morning. Good luck!!

I removed it, still no luck. I've now done every possible thing I can with DEP and still get the same error. Actually it has gotten worse. It won't even open the main page of the game before giving me the error, before at least it was trying to load.

Good night!

Follow up to my tech issue .... I decided after hours of trying to figure this out to just reinstall the game. At first I tried to use my saved games back up file ... but I hadn't backed those up since mid June, so it was peeps that had already passed .. so I lost a lot of my progress. I deleted all my backups, image backups and downloaded the free trial again from the LDW website. Since I had deleted everything connected to my old games, I started a new family. It seems to be working for now without getting the errors. Will the trial expire after a certain amount of time? I have been running it for almost 2 hours now and it hasn't. I have saved my key # to unlock the game .... will I need to use it or will this game not even expire? I hope that made sense!

Once you have installed and activated the game, the activation information is stored on your computer and you will not need to enter it again (even if you reinstall the game), as long as you download and install from the same site where you purchased it.

I'm glad it's working again. One thing you should be aware of about Windows Vista is that it has extra security features to prevent changes to installed programs. I have described one facet of those features in the "Special note for Windows Vista users" at the bottom of this post. That security feature may have played a role in the difficulties you were experiencing last night.

Oh good, I'm glad I don't have to reactivate it at any point.

Vista drives me batty. I'm always checking and deleting mod images from that virtual store file. When I do that, it deletes them out of my game ... even though I have saved them in the images folder.

OH NO! I installed some mods ... and now I'm getting the same stupid error!!! It won't run. I even deleted the images out of that virtual store. Can I just not install mods or what? This was working just fine for me until last night!

Ok, I just went in, deleted all images out of virtual store ... reinstalled my backup images and now the game starts. How can I get this to work with a mod? I'm def thinking the mods are what is causing this. What do you think?

I do believe that the changes you are making in the Program Files folder when you're installing mods are contributing to the problem. It is a very complex thing to explain what Vista is doing with Virtual Store (and why it's doing that), but let's just say that Vista doesn't like you messing with any files that are contained in the Program Files folder. Depending on how you're making the changes, and how often, I can very well imagine that Vista could determine that there is a security risk and shut down the game.

I run into the same issues quite often with my Vista, and the three steps I always take is disabling DEP for the game's .exe in the Program Files folder, running as administrator and finally using compatibility mode for XP SP2.

Right click the .exe and click on the compatibility tab. From there check Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows
XP SP2.

>_< I Hope it stops doing this for you. As LadyCFII mentioned, it probably notices the changes and defines it as a security risk.

Right now it's running well (knock on wood). Probably just jinxed myself with that comment! I have the DEP disabled and do run it as admin. I have not tried running it in compatibility mode though .. I saw those settings, but was afraid to mess with them. If I run into these problems again I will give that a try!

Thanks so much for your help and advice!

Happy 4th to everyone!

Happy 4th 1littleb! I hope everything works out for you I'm still excited to see your mods

Hi 1littleb!!

I have Vista and my game is doing the same thing. I tried everything like you did as per Xay and it is just getting worse. I have 6 families going and will be heartbroken!!! Did you get it to work?

Well you guys! DARN!!! Here I go to uninstall VF. Thanks for all of the info you guys! From now on the mods will be kept to a minimum. I LOVE VISTA! NOT!

Vista can be like a very strict baby sitter sometimes..it protects your files to keep from bad files (malware) doing bad things to your system and playing with your files.

You do need to have certain rights over the Program Files folder to make any changes to it in the first place so this would be telling your baby sitter to back off because you know what you're doing..

to test if Vista just doesn't want you playing with your Program Files folder, you can try moving/installing the Virtual Families folder to another area of your computer and try seeing if it'll run properly from there. If this is the case, you can consider moving your game onto a blank CD

Okay, now I'm having this problem. I've tried the things described in this thread - reinstalling, DEP settings, compatibility - and nothing seems to be working. It gets past the LDW logo scene and to the loading screen and then it stops.

--Oh yes, and I'm running an evaluation copy of Windows 7. It doesn't seem, thus far, to be all that different than Vista...

Have you tried temporarily moving your savegame files (or renaming the savegame folder) to see if one of the files has become corrupted? A corrupted savegame file can cause loading problems.

Normally I'm pretty computer savvy, but it seems this has gone over my head. Heh. What exactly am I trying to do?

Krystal,

This FAQ answer should help.

I backed up the files, renamed the folder with the saved games and it still crashed... but then I reinstalled the game, put in all the mods I wanted in one big file copying session and now it seems to be working!!

(P.S. I think the problem also had something to do with the fact I hadn't noticed the name of one of the mods was slightly off from what the game recognized So I guess it's all on me!)

Yay!

Glad you got it working! I'd guess you're right and it was because the game was trying to load an important image and crashed when it couldn't find it.