crashing - no education bar despite plenty - what's the cause?

[dare2go]

_{I have tried to search up on this - but couldn't find anything related...}

1. I experience constant crashes to desktop. I don't have to do anything, just start "snail pace" and the game crashes within 30 seconds to the desktop. (I usually save in "Pause" mode)
2. I'm currently playing a NAM test city within a region which was started before I got Rushhour (and all upgrade options + custom content). Just started this one to learn how to work all features of the latest NAM + RHW, so I picked an empty tile within the region. All other cities in the region (around 6, the largest with around 340,000 Sims) don't crash, though some have display issues (like one tile a street was displaying as checkered coloured tiles.
3. the trouble started after I bulldozed right through the center of town to lay a sunken highway.
4. now I notice that my bar for education is all red! No idea why, because before this problem started it was around 95% green similar to the current land value (screen shot further down - I want to keep this together...)
5. I bulldozed one elementary school during he building of the highway, but it wasn't really needed anymore since the Sims in this part of town don't even use the nearby schools to half their capacity...

So what has gone wrong?
What could be causing the crashes?
And why is my education down to "zero"?
Could a mod have caused this?

I initially suspected conflicts with oneway roads along the highway, since the exits aren't oneway - so I have changed this.
In between I had installed the RTMTV3 upgrade - yet by now all of this has been removed.

Screen shot:

red circles: education facilities in THIS part of town, all up there are around 7 elementaries, 3 or 4 libraries, 3 high schools (not counting the one marked with 'new' on the right, 2 colleges with around 500 students each (w/o the 'new' one), one university, 3 museums - and we're talking less than 90,000 sims so far... Red X marks the demolished elementary school.
RCI demand is actually o.k. (though shouldn't be related to my problems), only agriculture and dirty (due to increased tax and clean air ordinance) are well down, manufacturing and hightech demand are satisfactory, with new zonings filling at an o.k. speed, overall ~56,000 jobs right now...

Important question:
could I empty my plug-in folder, except the NAM parts, and then start the (existing) city to see if a plug-in causes the crash? Or will missing plug-ins and textures also cause crashes? I thought this way I could add all plug-ins bit-by-bit to see which work, which might be the culprit...

Any ideas? Cheers

[Indisguise]

There is one known bug that could be your problem.

That if you edit or alter an educational building that already exists in your city to new stats without first bulldozing all pre-existing lots in the city before the changing the stats.

This can cause the slider funding to zero and/or CTD issues if you query or try and bulldoze the building with the old stats, this could be almost any building, reward or even a park or some other lot with educational values that add or subtract from to your EQ, 

eg toroco's opera house fix mod that alters the original opera house, if you add the mod to your game without first bulldozing all the opera houses in the city or region, this sort of issue can happen,

This would be just a guess, but sounds like the issues you are having, check the funding for educational buildings, run the city, see if the funding falls to zero by itself.

[MandelSoft]

^^ The same happens if you install the Functional Landmarks Plugin when already having Maxis Landmarks in your city: CTDs 

[dare2go]

There is one known bug that could be your problem.

That if you edit or alter an educational building that already exists in your city to new stats without first bulldozing all pre-existing lots in the city before the changing the stats.

...

This would be just a guess, but sounds like the issues you are having, check the funding for educational buildings, run the city, see if the funding falls to zero by itself.

Thanks - though not very encouraging - as I cannot "run" the city because it only takes 30 seconds to crash...
I thought it might be a bug = that's why built the new (not yet needed) schools on the right of the screen, in an effort to jump start things...

I didn't check the overall education budget, but I checked all individual buildings = they're all fine and well funded (except the highschool in the screen shot which has around 100 students too many = nothing I would normally worry too much about).

[Indisguise]

Could be also you have too many plugins in your plugins folder for your computer to handle. Check the size of the plugins folder and post your specs. Could be your just over taxing your system ??  maybe ??

yea about the only way to actually find a culprit lot or mod is the old take 1/2 or there abouts out put in a temp hold file and keep swaping in and out  and widdle down to your find it by trial and error. Yea not very encouraging 

Since you recently added the NAM I would start there, double check the readme and make sure you installed it correctly and don't have any mods that might be colficting with it. Or  try unistalling it and and re-installing it with just the basics, skip some of the optional things you might not be using, extra bridges, GLR, stuff like that see if that helps.


Try not to touch the dependancies for the stuff you use, just stick to taking in and out of the lots themselves. lots. Be very careful about swaping in and out civic buildings that exist in your city.

crashing and educational funding could be two differnt issues your experiencing at the same time too.

[xxdita]

Since your goal for the city is to learn to how to use the new NAM pieces and such, my best advice would be to remove ALL of your plugins aside from the latest NAM & addons for it (RHW, SAM, etc...), and start a brand new city, possibly in a new region for best results. This is probably the easiest way to determine if the problem is created by a conflicting mod, or something else.

The crashing could also be due to a plugin  you've recently removed, but didn't demolish in this city. Any sort of landmark or civic building... Since you're not experiencing the educational slider bug, I don't think that any of your edu buildings have been modified, but perhaps you've removed one entirely?

[dare2go]

Could be also you have too many plugins in your plugins folder for your computer to handle. Check the size of the plugins folder and post your specs. Could be your just over taxing your system ??  maybe ??

yea about the only way to actually find a culprit lot or mod is the old take 1/2 or there abouts out put in a temp hold file and keep swaping in and out  and widdle down to your find it by trial and error. Yea not very encouraging 

[...]

That the plug-in folder could be too large was one of my thoughts...

I'm sorry but I got impatient and have removed all plugins - re-installing some of them right now bit by bit -
and (hopefully) with much better organisation. 

Since I experienced problems before with some, mostly ones downloaded from Simkurier.de, I'll try to keep these out, sticking to the ones which worked the best for me.
And yes: my oldie computer is about due for replacement; it's an old ASUS Notebook W3N (bought new in September 2005) with 1.25 gig of memory, and unfortunately with a really full harddisk (of originally only 40 GB) - so not much room for a swap file. Since some minor hardware things are failing too there's no use to upgrade the harddrive and go through the hustle to re-install everything.
Unfortunately my finances are tight right now. 

[SC4BOY]

.. oldie computer is about due for replacement; it's an old ASUS Notebook W3N (bought new in September 2005) with 1.25 gig of memory, and unfortunately with a really full harddisk (of originally only 40 GB) - so not much room for a swap file.

This indeed is a receipe for disaster in SC4. You still can thoroughly enjoy the game if you take a "selective" approach with fewer custom items and lower setting for things like redraw speed, resolution, details, automata, animated lots, etc.. And of course you will always suffer the nuisances of slower saves, slower playing speeds, smaller city constraints, etc.