Help Needed to Stop the Crashing!

[snowginger23]

Hi all...I know EVERYONE has been having this problem, but I can not figure out why mine isn't working. Let me just tell you how extremely frustrated I am. On this same computer I was able to run The Sims 2 plus every expansion pack for it without a problem...now I can't even run this one for more than 2 seconds! Last Friday I bought The Sims 3 Plus Pets and installed it. Spent all night creating a family and moving into a house, but didn't actually play the game yet. The following morning I was able to play for about 30-40 min without any problem. Then, I switched back and forth between buy mode and build mode and since then my game has been crashing every time I attempt to play. Sometimes it crashes to desktop, other times it freezes my computer completely. I've been researching this issue, contacting EA to figure it out, and literally have tried everything. Here's what I've done:

-Uninstalled/Installed 3x (this last uninstall was a manual uninstall)
-Changed DEP settings
-Turned off UAC
-Tried Playing in Windowed Mode

And here's my computer specs:
Windows 7 x64-bit Intel® Core™ i5 CPU M 520 2.40GHz
4096 MB RAM, 397 GB on Hard Drive
Intel® HD Graphics (core i5) 128 MB Video Memory
Driver Version 8.15.10.2104
DirectX 11

According to The Sims 3 System Requirements I have everything it needs to run, and more. What is wrong here???

[Minty]

Simple answer, if you installed the latest patch, that's what's screwed your game up - and many others.

[snowginger23]

I haven't, though. UGGGHHHH. This is so frustrating.