Sims 3 unplayable on my windows 11, sunset valley is not loading, comes up as "serious error"

[bpr1023]

I've been dealing with this issue for days where I'm able to launch the Sims 3, and once launched I'm able to start the application, but once it comes down to starting a new household it won't continue the game play because a "serious error" had occurred and then it says to restart the game.
I've tried restarting the game, I've tried going into task manager and running the game on only 1 CPU, I've tried using compatibility options where it runs it with windows XP, which is supposed to be more compatible with the game. I tried renaming the sims 3 folder itself in the electronic arts folder so that it would populate a new sims 3 folder once launched and that worked for a minute but when it came down to saving my household it wouldn't and couldn't save it because of an error (if I can remember i think it was error 16, which when I looked it up it was an error associated with the world being too memory heavy which sometimes happens when there is too many DLCs or content in general in the world, though I am playing the game with the bare minimum of the base game without custom content so the error doesn't make sense).
I'm not sure what else to do. I did get the game through the steam monthly membership thing, so I didn't have to pay full price for the game. It gave me a key/code to use to run the game, so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. If I don't find a solution I'm planning on simply uninstalling and getting the game full price so I can try and see if that makes a difference.

[bpr1023]

I think i fixed it actually! I ended up uninstalling and removing it from my library in steam, reinstalling it, going to the EA app and installing it there, and running it through EA app. once it launched, i was able to start a new save but then it crashed and went to a black screen so i had to restart my laptop. once restarted i went ahead and ran sims 3 again but in windowed mode and its working just fine now!

[orthographe]

remember to use "save as" whenever you save your game, error 16 is haunting everyone right now and the only way around it is to use save as rather than the normal save.

[HiFive]

Using "Save As" instead of "Save" has been THE standard advice for this game ever since it was launched on Steam. Using "Save" causes the game to write over only the portions of the Save file that it thinks were changed, while leaving the rest of the file "as is". This is how the errors creep in. It is recommended that you use sequentially-numbered saves, using the "Save As" button, such as SunsetValley Altos 001, SunsetValley Altos 002, etc. Thus, the game is forced to write an entirely new save file each time.

I also recommend going back to the Main Menu (or whatever it's called) after every 10 - 15 saves in order to delete extra save files and leave more room for new saves. I usually keep 4 or 5 of the most recent saves and delete the older ones. Be sure to delete the extra saves after every play session, as well.

Lastly, it is also helpful to delete 5 cache files after every play session. They can get bloated after a while and cause problems.

CASPartCache.package
compositorCache.package
scriptCache.package
SimCompositorCache.package
socialcache.package

This is safe to do. The game will create new ones when you play it again.

Better yet, you can use the script in this guide to do that for you, as well as get rid of any bloat that can collect in some other files that are more difficult to reach. It will clean the files and then launch the game. I just don't know if it works for Windows 11 players that have to use workarounds for opening the game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1853224297