Sims 2 Deluxe

Last month, I bought the Sims 2 Deluxe Edition. When I received it, I installed it on my computer and started to play the game. I created my first person and hit "save", but the game wouldn't save my work. Finally I hit Control-Alt-Delete and closed the program. This happened several times and I finally gave up for the night. The next day I tried again. And again it crashed. I still can’t get it to work but I have started cleaning up my hard drive (right now I am defragmenting) and I hope that will work.