I have been discouraged for a couple years regarding getting CAW to work with my steam installation. I just tried again today, editing the registry according to the instructions at the steam guide. I get an apparently successful installation but the same error message whenever I try to operate the game: : "The Sims 3 Create A World-Beta has crashed! Exception information: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt."
Things I have tried: Uninstalling and reinstalling CAW 3 times. Making sure all the residual files from the last time I had a working CAW installation are removed. Changing the location of the CAW install to inside the Steamapps folder (not anybody's recommendation, just an idea that nothing could be worse than nothing).

Finally, I have been trying and trying and trying to set the Sims 3 document files to not be read-only. I followed instructions on the Microsoft pages for doing this but even so, the files immediately revert to read-only. I don't even know if that is what the "protected memory" refers to.

I know for almost certain sure this isn't One Drive shenanigans, because I did disable that mess years ago and have had no other One Drive nonsense since. So does anybody have anything else to suggest? I haven't tried yet downloading the Large Address Aware program mentioned at the main troubleshooting thread here because I am skeptical that it's relevant.

Have you tried running it (or perhaps SuperCAW instead) as administrator?

This is also the same error that happens if you don't have the right version of CAW for your patch level, there are two: https://forums.ea.com/discussions/t...replies/8277868
Steam is 1.67, but worth trying both if that's the one giving out to you.

Edited: I just realized you suggested trying the "wrong" version since the correct version isn't opening & I have nothing to lose. I'll try that! I doi run everything as administrator, though.

Well, it did give me a different result- CAW winks out silently without an error message! Uninstalling the 1.69 version and reinstalling the 1.67 version returns the error message.

I'm really stuck on why Windows will not let me unset read-only from the Sims 3 folder. I can't help but feel it is related to why CAW thinks it can't read the game files-I mean, beyond the fact that the language sounds like the same thing, I understand that can be misleading, but maybe it could be, not that the persistent read-only status is preventing CAW from reading the files, but that maybe the same issue is causing both?

The error message is referring to memory (RAM) being read-written to, not the game data- which can be thrown for many reasons. I haven't seen the LAA advice myself to know what context that was given in, but that would indeed be more related.
Read-only is perfectly normal for any folder to show in the properties, doesn't necessarily mean the contents are inheriting it. The game itself would not function if it didn't have write permissions where required.

What's most likely is that this tool is just drastically out of support. Being on Steam, a version that didn't exist when CAW was last updated, is one thing. If you're on Windows 11, that could be another factor. Certain driver updates can simply phase old software out of commission as well.

My last suggestion would be to try rebooting your PC and starting Steam and CAW as the first and only programs in the session to see if there is any difference. Disconnecting from the internet can also help rule out file-sync of any sort.
Otherwise, hopefully one of the CAW users around might recognise the issue.

Alkas, that didn't change the behavior either. I suspect my computer has hidden demons of its own. When I have a fuller wallet I'll rtake it in to get looked at, meanwhile I guess I'll just empty out existing worlds and do what I can within those confines. Sculpting, painting, and roadwork are the main things one needs CAW foir, after all, and those are the most frustrating stages of weorld building, so maybe this easier, less thorough task is okay for these stressful times.

Maybe setting the LAA flag manually might help? It should come with some patch but maybe for Steam version it's different?
https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?ti...ing_LAA_Crashes

The only other thing that comes to my mind is to try and adding the DEP exception:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfi...s/?id=152857498

It's probably completely unrelated to the cause of the crashes, but afaik it can't hurt either.