My computer randomly shuts down??

[Darth Kosher]

So I was playing my sims, and I found that my computer kept shutting down in the middle of gameplay. I have little to no custom content. My laptop is a gaming one, and a majority of the time, the game runs incredibely smoothly. But up til now, it just wont stop crashing. I really, really don't want to reload all of the games again because I LOVE this family that I just created. How else can I fix this?  

[Menaceman]

When you say your computer "shuts down" do you mean that your entire machine shuts itself off or that just the game crashes to desktop?

If your entire machine is shutting down than I would say it is a hardware issue and not the fault of your game.

If it is just your game that shuts down then it may be that your save has become corrupted. You could try the Save As function instead of Save the next time you play and see if that helps.  

[Darth Kosher]

It's my entire computer that shuts down. But it's never done that before! I don't know how my hardware has changed from before when I used to play, to now. I ran a computer cleaner to clean out any bad files, cleaned out with my spyware...did everything to get my computer running smoothly, and it still shuts completely off.  

[Menaceman]

Have you installed any new expansion packs lately? If so, maybe your machine is overheating with the new pressure put on it?
Have you tried cleaning out the fan?