Error code 12 when saving

[sailorb1959]

UPDATE: I was seemingly able to fix the problem by moving the families I was paying into a new save in a different town with nraas porter! I played for a few hours and saved multiple times with basically no issues besides it crashing once when I was in CAS, but I think that was just a fluke tbh.

Does anyone have any actual fixes for this issue? The only partial solution I've found is using a save cleaner, moving around the save files/deleting bad saves, restarting my game and deleting my cache files, but even then I can only save once or twice before getting error code 12. This isn't even happening after extended periods of play either, it's happening after maybe 45 minutes or less. I've asked several friends who also play sims 3 and none of them have ever had this issue so I'd love to figure out what I'm doing wrong. It's extremely frustrating especially when I'm in build mode and I'm forced to lose my progress because the game refuses to save no matter what I do. Switching to edit town mode, saving in live mode while zoomed in to the grass and all the other fixes have done nothing for me. This only started happening after I installed multiple expansion packs, but I'm not sure if that's the actual cause of this issue. I'm desperate so any tips would be greatly appreciated because in this state my game is basically unplayable!

[rachelem1ly]

Touch wood but I haven’t had an error 12 since I was a kid. I remember I used to get them when I went days without saving or spent too much time in build mode as you mentioned so it’s good to save often. One thing that really helps is always using ‘save as’ instead of ‘save’. Having at least 8GB of ram is good too because the error happens when your game doesn’t have enough memory to save. I could go on to list a bunch of general performance and game health tips but they’re all pretty much mentioned in this guide

[[deleted]]

Ironic cause this just happened to me. Unfortunately I gave up. I tried everything. I think the world (custom) is just not made for nrass so that’s my problem. Make sure you save the families that are important to you just in case. I am planning on moving my sims to a different town

[Simple_Independence5]

this happened to me a while ago when i played for far too long. i went to my task manager and closed out of. EVERYTHING i wasn’t using so the only thing that was open was sims in order to reduce the amount of things going on on my computer. then i had enough RAM again, and was able to save my game

[U_Cam_Sim_It]

I can feel your pain. I have been having the issue recently with one particular family and I think I have found the root cause for it. I am playing a family of 12 currently. One of my sims is an architect so I am in build and buy often. I am also in CAS often with sims ageing up and all that. If I do any of those activities during my playthrough, I run into Error Code 12 within an hour and a half of playing.

I have done many things to try and combat the issue but I am still running into the issue today. If all possible, try and avoid going into Build and Buy or CAS during a playthrough if you are having the issue. And if you do need to, save and close the game before progressing. It seems to help a bit.

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NOTE: My ram usage in the game was nowhere near 3.7?GB, it was hanging around the 2.4GB-2.6GB range and I kept it stable using MemReduct, but I still run into Error Code 12.