Sims 3 freezes after 5 minutes

[pianogirlx]

Okay so when I first got the game it worked fine.  I played it for hours and nothing went wrong with it.  This lasted for about a week.

Then one day the screen froze.  I could move the mouse but couldn't click on anything.  I couldn't ctrl+alt+del so I had to turn off my computer completely.  When I turned the computer back it wouldn't let me play the game.  When I clicked on the play button, the message "disc authentication error" came up.  Ugh, that's the same error that comes up and won't let me play the game on my other computer.

Then after shutting off the computer and waiting awhile, it let me play it again.  Except, this time after 5 minutes it froze.  I had to shut off the completely.  When I restarted it, the exact same thing as above happened again.

Now whenever I play, it goes for 5 minutes then freezes.  Help please!  I don't know what to do, this is sooo frustrating.  It seems like a lot of waste of money for a game I only got to play for about 10 hours in total and now it hardly works anymore.  And my computer has more requirements than needed so I know this is not the issue.  There's nothing else loaded on the computer (not even internet) because my grandpa just bought it but then decided he didn't need it so he gave it to me...pleaseee help!