Sigh, sims stopped working...

[LIM GUAN ENG'S SON]

Yesterday I cant even start the game...so i decided to redownload everything and now I can start the game but NOW when i click create sims, it keep pops up sims 3 stopped working whenever i'm in creating sim page

so many problems!

[LIM GUAN ENG'S SON]

Help, if there's any solution. Appreciated

[GeekyGek]

did you try going through these steps?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=279488894

[LIM GUAN ENG'S SON]

In the post, the only possibilities you said would be my system requirement is not enough, but i'm pretty sure my laptop is more than enough for the sims 3, I;m using MSI gaming laptop

[GeekyGek]

whats your system specs?

[LIM GUAN ENG'S SON]

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300HQ CPU @ 2.30GHz 2.30GHz
RAM: 4 GB
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M
Windows 10

I'm not sure why? but I'm pretty sure its more than enough!

Please help, I would like to play

[GeekyGek]

well its using a mobile video processor which most likely means that your system ram (4gb) is being shared with it, probably leaving you with 3gb memory to your system, with windows 10 you can count on 1gb of that being ate up by the system. So yeah you make it but if you can i'd upgrade the system ram on that little laptop to 8gb, just so everything runs better for you.

You may of encountered a simular problem someone else was having, and may need to reinstall all the EP/SP packs. right click the game in the steam library, click properties and click the DLC tab, uncheck all of them and let it uninstall the EP/SP packs. after its all done, go back into it, and check all the boxes again, so that it will reinstall them.

Remember when you want to uninstall sims 3, always uninstall all the DLC first, then the game, it'll help prevent problems like that.

[LIM GUAN ENG'S SON]

But i already uninstalled for like twice...I have no time for that lol..

I uninstalled all and reinstalled together with the tick of my Expansion Packs, which is the university life and season packs.

Like really,is it my laptop or the game's problem? My girlfriend's laptop which i shared my library with her, she can play with her laptop without popping out the " Sims 3 stopped working". I wonder if it's because of windows 10, and yeah she's using windows 8

[LIM GUAN ENG'S SON]

PLUS, I realised when i untick the expansion packs and try to jsut play the base game. Then the launcher's problem right now, it pops out "error on startup please check the log" something like that. Why is this game so many problems -_-? i'm kinda fed up, it's like wasting my money buying it.

I admit it's a good game but with the problems I can't stand anymore

[GeekyGek]

few things to check on windows 10:

1) your video drivers are out of date - can cause the same issue. Same thing if the video is overheating, make sure that your video drivers are up to date. Being that sims 3 has no framerate cap it can cause video cards to heat up rather fast, expecially in laptops. If its a heat issue, the only thing I can really suggest for that is getting a cooling pad for your laptop.

Go into the nvidia control pannel and turn vsync on for sims 3, this usually helps with video issues. (I believe thats covered in the above guide)

2) go into the sims folder in steam and make sure that ts3w.exe is set to run as administrator (right click and go to compatability mode, check box run as administrator) if its not, problems can happen do to the UAC screwing with the game.

3) try running the game with the steam overlay disabled (right click the game in the library, click properties and uncheck enable the steam overlay while in-game). if that fixes the issue, exit the game, close out steam, go into the steam folder and right click steam.exe and go to compatability mode, check 'run as administrator' and restart steam, it'll prompt you that its running in compatabilty mode, just check the don't show again, and continue button. you should be able to turn the overlay back on without it interfering.

4) edit the sims3.ini file located in the steam apps folder (steam/steamapps/common/sims3/game/bin) and set 'fullscreen = 1' to fullscreen = 0, see if it will run properly, if it does, the game isn't properly detecting your video refresh, and you'll have to force it to use whatever your video uses... with the gtx mobile its usually 60hz, but can very per system. you can change that by editing the line within the sims3.ini file that reads resolution = xxx xxx 0, where xxx xxx is the screen resolution, change the 0 to your refresh rate.

This one can also denote that it could be a heat issue, do to the fact that when your running in a windowed mode, your framerate is capped to 30 fps, much less strain on the video.

5) some virus scanners see mass disk access as a possible threat, on a low mem system sims will use the disk alot more then a higher mem system, Mcafee is bad for that, which will cause games to suddenly 'terminate' for no reason. You can generally add a exception to 'ignore' folders for activity within virus scanners, you'd need to have it ignore the sims folder inside the documents folder.

[GeekyGek]

If all else fails - to do a clean install:

backup the folders from the sims folder in Documents to another folder:

SavedOutfits
SavedSims
Saves
Exports

take a screenshot using the steam overlay ingame prior to uninstalling it. exit the game, click view screenshots on the game panel, and the button 'show on disk', leave that window open and head back into the steam library.

Uninstall the EP/SP first, then uninstall sims 3.

after uninstalling the sims and the expansion packs - go into the documents folder, then Electronic Arts, and delete the sims folder left behind.

next go into your steam/steamapps/common/ folder and delete the sims 3 folder.

after that, go back to the explorer window we left open (screenshots) if your still in the screenshots folder, go up one folder, if there is anything inside that folder besides the screenshots folder, delete it.

the scarey part - be very careful not to delete the wrong thing in here...

open up regedit.exe if you open windows 10 search and type in regedit it will give you a link to open it.

browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sims(Steam)

right click Sims(Steam) and click delete.

close regedit.

Now your system is as if sims 3 was never installed on it. At this point I would suggest rebooting just to clear any retained data before reinstalling. If there was a issue caused by something being left behind from a previous install of sims 3, all that above would of cleared that out.

After rebooting, reinstall sims 3, right click it after its done installing DONT RUN THE GAME, right click it, click properties, then go to the DLC tab and make sure that the two DLC you have are checked. If not, check them and let it install. Close the property tab.

After the above is done, just to be safe prior to launching, right click sims 3, open properties, click local files, and verify integrity of game cache. If anything is missing or broken, it will replace the files at this point, just one extra step to make sure you have a good clean install.

Try running the game after all that is done. If everything goes smoothly, copy the folders your backed up from the sims 3 document folder back into their places Without the game running, and try loading up your previous save, if everything was fine prior and the game crashes at the same point now, then something is currupt within your save game.


(noticed a typo, fixed it)

[GeekyGek]

found something else that may help you if it continues to give you the "Program has stopped responding" popup, it requires you to do a regedit as well, and you'll need to reboot after doing it.

open up regedit (use windows 10 search, type in regedit and run the program)

browse to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

look for the key:

HungAppTimeout

its default value is 5000
(time to wait in miliseconds)

change it to 20000 (20 seconds)

Found a few threads where people were having issues with their games terminating during a mapload (different games), this was the suggested fix for them, and it worked for some, a few noted that theirs were not at the default value either, rather it was set to 500 instead of 5000, giving a mear 1/2 second wait after windows 'thought' the app might be hung.

Now, please note - changing this key will also change the amount of wait time when terminating a application via the task manager.

[LIM GUAN ENG'S SON]

Kinda too complicated to me, But I uninstalled everything from steam and i tried to search from my file explorer, anything about the sims, I just delete it.

And will try to reinstall everything tonight, hopefully it works.

Thank you for helping. If its not working, might just leave it. Not playing the sims anymore. Yes it is wasted but, it took me a long time to try to make it work

[GeekyGek]

Got my fingers crossed for you that it'll work :)

[LIM GUAN ENG'S SON]

It's working right now, But i'm not sure is the problem of updating or not. Because this time, I never click on update to the latest version, i jsut cancel and go into the game

[marstinson]

If you're playing on Steam, the game is patched when delivered (unlike EA *ahem*), so it's at the correct version when you click the "install" button in your library. The "update to the latest version" message is for the launcher and is mostly Store site compatibility, so can be ignored.