If your game crashes or freezes while you're searching through the catalog in Buy Mode or Build Mode, chances are you've downloaded a recolor or a new object mesh that was badly made.

If you ever find yourself in this predicament, take this as a suggestion and start organizing your downloads and follow this guide.

If you put everything you've downloaded into your Downloads folder, the best thing to do is to move the folder to your Desktop and then start the game up again. Check the catalog and see if you can click through the catalog without any crashes. More than likely you should no longer have any problems and that only tells you that it was overwritten by something you downloaded. Now you'll need to go through your Downloads folder and find the culprit.

Create an empty Downloads folder in C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 and then reinstall the CEP files. Then start moving your files back (from the Downloads folder on your Desktop) a handful at a time. Restart your game and click through the catalog. With the next batch that you move, if the game crashes while you're viewing the catalog, then you know the culprit is in that batch.

Note: If you can remember the date of last time you had no problems with the catalog, then sort your Downloads folder by last modified date and take out all the ones that you put in there after that date. That might help narrow down your search (especially if you have tens of thousands of downloaded files).