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Fails To Load Into Household
Hi All, I can create a sim, place them on a lot but then when I try to load into the household it resets me back to the 'choose a household' section and will not let me load in to play. I have tried to repair the game twice but this is not working. Does anyone else have this issue?Initialization Error only when Russian language is selected, English works fine.
Hello, I have an issue with The Sims 4 on PC (EA App). The game works perfectly in English, but when I select Russian language, I always get "Initialization Error at Startup". Important details: - The game worked in Russian before for a long time on the same PC. - Windows system locale and regional settings are correct. - Reinstalling the game does not help. - Repair does not fix the issue. - The problem happens ONLY with Russian language. - English works without any errors. It seems the Russian language pack or entitlement is corrupted or not downloading correctly. I kindly ask for: - Forced refresh of entitlements OR - Manual reset of the Russian language pack on my account. Thank you.[CURRENT ISSUE] Sims 4 Unable to Start, Already Running
Overview jump to: Workarounds This is a common error that is usually caused when Sims 4 cannot access the user folder in Documents > Electronic Arts. It can also be triggered by outdated or otherwise broken mods or custom content. This guide is only for this specific error in Windows. If you're seeing the error on a Mac, please use this dedicated Mac thread. If you have a different problem, please create your own thread in the appropriate tech (PC, Mac, Console) forum, or the Gameplay or Mods & CC forum, depending on the nature of your issue. Workarounds These workarounds are listed in order from simplest to most complicated, to avoid anyone doing more work than is necessary. If you've already tried one, or it doesn't apply to you, move on to the next step. jump to: Pause Onedrive syncing jump to: Remove mods jump to: Clean user folder jump to: Reset date and time jump to: Temporarily disable antivirus jump to: New Windows account jump to: Move/restore location of Documents jump to: Reset permissions for Documents jump to: Virus scan Pause OneDrive syncing OneDrive can lock up the Sims 4 user folder, or any folder it's automatically syncing, for various reasons. The easiest way to diagnose this is to temporarily pause syncing. Right-click the cloud icon in the lower-right corner of the screen to see the option: If this helps, the underlying issue is OneDrive, and you may want or need to adjust your settings accordingly. You can choose which folders to sync, stop OneDrive from syncing your Sims 4 folder or all of Documents automatically, or get rid of OneDrive entirely. Please see this guide, specifically the "I don't want OneDrive to sync my files" and "I want to get rid of OneDrive" sections, for further help: [CURRENT ISSUE] Sims 4 saves/user content disappearing (PC) | EA Forums - 11838402 ↑ Remove mods It's as simple as that: Move the Mods folder out of Documents > Electronic Arts and onto the desktop, and delete localthumbcache.package. If this works, something in the Mods folder is the problem. Look for updates to your mods, especially after a patch; or use the 50/50 method to sort through the files in the Mods folder. https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Finding_Problem_Custom_Content#The_50.25_Method Keep in mind you may have more than one broken mod or cc item, so be sure to test every file at least once. ↑ Clean user folder Testing with a clean user folder, otherwise known as a factory reset, means temporarily removing all user data. This ensures that nothing from your existing folder is preventing Sims 4 from loading. Move the entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents > Electronic Arts and onto your desktop. If it copies instead of moving, or you get an error when trying to move it, please see the OneDrive section above. Otherwise, when you launch the game, if it launches, a clean folder will spawn with no content. Your saves and other content will be intact in the folder you moved but temporarily not read by the game. Don't add anything to the new folder yet; just see whether you can get far enough to start a new save. If this works, you can start moving your content from the old Sims 4 folder to the new one, testing each time to make sure the game still loads. In each case, please move the files only, not the folder they're in, for example move the individual Tray files, not the entire Tray folder. Where the game has created a new file or folder, it's best to use that rather than your old copy. For further reading about the contents of the user folder and what you might want to preserve, please see this: https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2014/09/user-files-explained/ While moving over your data, if and when you see the "already running" error again, you'll know that one of the files you just moved is the problem, and you can split and retest that batch until you find out which one. For mods and custom content, the 50/50 method can make the process much more efficient. A single file or folder that prevents the game from launching is not recoverable; you'll need to delete it, or in the case of mods or cc, find an updated, compatible version. ↑ Reset your computer's date and time An occasional cause of this error is your computer having the wrong time and date. So try changing it to something else, then telling the system to use internet time again. ↑ Disable antivirus (TEMPORARILY) An overzealous third-party antivirus or even Windows Defender can block Sims 4's access to its user folder. To test this theory, temporarily disable any third-party antivirus, just long enough to try to open Sims 4. As long as you're not doing anything else at the same time, your computer should be safe. If this helps, set exceptions for TS4_DX9_x64.exe (if using DirectX 9) and/or TS4_x64.exe (if using DX11) as well as EADesktop.exe. You can find a more detailed guide for your specific antivirus in the online documentation provided by the publisher of the software. For Windows Defender, the only potential problem is with Controlled Folder Access. Please see this post for instructions on changing its settings or disabling the feature entirely: https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/03/windows-10-defender-controlled-folder-access.html ↑ New admin Windows account It's possible that the problem is caused by a setting or broken permissions in your main Windows account, and the fastest way to test this theory is to create a new account. It must have admin rights (not a standard user account), and it must be local, as in, not connected to your Microsoft account. To create a new account, open Windows Settings > Accounts > Family & other users, click "Add someone else to this PC" (under Other users, not Your family), click "I don't have this person's sign-in information," then "Add a user without a Microsoft account." Choose the username and password, answer some security questions, and you'll see the new account. Click it and select "Change account type" to make it an Administrator account if it's not already. It should say "Administrator - Local account" when you're done: Click ctrl-alt-delete, select Switch user, and sign into the new account. Then open the EA App (and Steam or the Epic launcher if applicable) and try to launch Sims 4. You shouldn't need to reinstall anything. Your saves and other user data won't be available, but that's fine for the purpose of this test. If Sims 4 works in the new account, it means the problem is contained to your old account. You can simply continue playing in the new account if you want. For any saves or other user data you'd like to transfer to the new account, sign into the old account again and copy the relevant files to C:\Users\Public. This folder is accessible from all user accounts; you can grab the files from there once you're in the new account. If you'd like to try to fix your old account, please see the next two sections. ↑ Move or restore location of Documents If Windows has placed the location of Documents somewhere Sims 4 can't access properly, you may need to move the folder. To find the current location, search in Windows for Command Prompt, open it, and enter this command: reg query "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders" /v "Personal" This will return the full file path to Documents. Unless you've chosen a custom location, it should be one of these, depending on whether OneDrive is involved: C:\Users\[username]\Documents C:\Users\[username]\OneDrive\Documents If you see a different location, one you didn't intend to use, changing it may help. If Documents is in OneDrive and you don't want it there, the best course of action is to tell OneDrive to stop syncing your files, as described here: [CURRENT ISSUE] Sims 4 saves/user content disappearing (PC) | EA Forums - 11838402 If this doesn't successfully change the location, or your Documents directory is in a different unintended location, you can change it by editing your computer's registry. Be very careful when editing the registry—an error can cause problems up to and including preventing your computer from working at all. So please follow these instructions exactly, and don't touch anything other than the Personal value: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/operation-to-change-a-personal-folder-location-fails-in-windows-ffb95139-6dbb-821d-27ec-62c9aaccd720 Important: This process is only for moving Documents to another location on an internal drive. DO NOT move Documents to an external drive. If you would like to store your Sims 4 user folder externally, please use this guide instead. Important: Please also keep in mind that when you change the location of Documents, you also change the location where Sims 4 looks for its user folder. You will therefore need to move your saves and other user files to the new location. ↑ Reset permissions on Documents folder When Sims 4 works in a new Windows account but not your existing one, the problem may be broken permissions in the old account. You can use the takeown command to reset the permissions on the Documents folder if necessary. First, move the Electronic Arts folder out of Documents, or delete it if it's empty. Search in Windows for "Command Prompt," open it, and enter this command: reg query "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders" /v "Personal" The location you see is what you'll use for the command. The command itself is this: takeown /F "[file path to Documents folder]" So it will probably be one of these, but double-check anyway: takeown /F "C:\Users\username\Documents" or takeown /F "C:\Users\username\OneDrive\Documents" Write your actual username for this Windows account (your main one) instead of username. Since the syntax needs to be exactly right, please copy this command to a Notepad file, substitute in your username, and then copy that string when you're ready to use it. Hit Windows key-X and choose either "PowerShell (Administrator)" or "Windows Terminal (Administrator)," whichever option is offered, paste the command into the window, and enter. Then restart your computer and try again to play. If that doesn't help, please see the accepted solution of this thread for further troubleshooting: "A problem occured while saving the game. No game session data was preserved." | EA Forums - 9150501 You'll of course apply these steps to the Documents folder your account is using, wherever Command Prompt told you that was. ↑ Virus scan If none of the other troubleshooting steps help, or one of them helps temporarily but Sims 4 stops working again, before you've added back any content or made any other changes that would account for this, your computer may have a virus or other malware. So it's worth running a virus scan. Download Malwarebytes (the free trial is fine) from here: https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download Open it, click Scan > Custom Scan > Configure Scan, check all the boxes both for all scan types and for all your drives, and let it do its job. This could take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the amount of data and whether the scan finds anything, so you may want to set it to run while you're doing something else. The Malwarebytes report is simple to understand if it doesn't find anything, but if you'd like me to take a look, feel free to reply to this post and attach the report. ↑ If none of this makes a difference, please post in this thread asking for further help. Let me know whether you can play in the new admin Windows account or not: this is important diagnostic information.Sims 4 won't load
I recently have just re-downloaded the Sims on my new PC and it won't load. I have waited 20+ minutes with no response. I have done all the suggestions online. I have uninstalled and re-installed. I have reset my PC and EA app. I have cleared the cache on EA and documents. I have never had mods/CC but I also removed that folder from documents. I have reported this to EA a couple of times now with no response. Has anyone had this issue or know how to fix this?Game Crashing when Accessing Various Lots in Newcrest
EA_Cath As suggested in my previous post, I'm starting this thread for my Newcrest lot issue. I'm having this issue as when trying to add residential lot builds in Newcrest for my latest game save. The game crashed when trying to enter the Lookout Cookout lot and did it as well when trying with the Sandy Run lot. I don't use any CC in my game. Have been playing in Sims 3 until Newcrest is usable again. The newest patch did not fix this. I have been able to add three of the game's venue lots and one residential on the Rippling Flats lot. The main lots that crash are Sandy Run, Lookout Cookout, Hillside Highlands and Oak Alcove. When entering build mode on these lots it fails to load and the game stops working. It's been happening for awhile so I've gone back to playing Sims 3 while this is being sorted out. I've tested it after the last two patches but it has not been resolved. I do not play with any CC or mods. Some lots I've been able to enter but when placing one of my lot builds the game crashes as well. About two months ago, I got a new gaming laptop but when trying to share the builds from my households to transfer to the new game save, the gallery stopped accepting lot saves but would accept individual rooms and households. I really didn't want to have piece together my previous builds, especially the large ones. I hope these issues are fixed soon, so that I can get back to playing Sims 4 with the households I have lots saved for. Thank you.
The Sims 4 is "not responding" when opening the game.
My Sims 4 starts up as "not responding" and freezes like that for a while. I've already uninstalled the game and cleaned all its folders, reinstalled it with a clean copy, and even then every time I start it, it's still "not responding." Then it unfreezes, but as soon as the plumbob spins, it freezes and the music stops. I didn't play for about two weeks, and when I came back, it's like this.Lovestruck EP16 Entitlement Bug (Code Redeemed, Active). Need Manual License Fix
Product: The Sims 4: Lovestruck Expansion Pack (EP16) Platform: PC (EA App) Issue: The pack is permanently stuck on the "In-game content" status in the EA App. I cannot download/install the content. Key Facts (Verified): The product code was successfully redeemed on this EA Account. The seller (Microsoft) has confirmed the code is active and valid on their system. Live Chat agents are incorrectly citing a "non-trusted retailer" and closing the case, despite the successful activation confirmed by the retailer. Action Required: This is a documented server-side entitlement sync failure after a successful code redemption. I have my original product code ready for verification by a specialist. I require a Community Manager or specialist to manually re-grant the EP16 license to this account immediately.
[HR] Chestnut Ridge FPS drop and simulation lag
So I've had this issue happen a few times in Chestnut Ridge, specifically in Galloping Gulch while playing on the largest lot. Sometimes the simulation will start lagging (sims not moving) and after a few seconds the fps starts to drop until the game completely freezes and I have to close it from task manager. This was with mods so I did make a new save with NO mods/cc and placed a new household on that same lot and just waited to see if it happened again. It did occur again after waiting awhile Some extra information if needed... - If I pause the game, the FPS goes back to normal. When I resume it will drop again. - Last time it happened on my main save, I saw a sim on a horse riding towards my lot and when he disappeared my fps returned to normal and my sims start moving again. - This may be a coincidence but at least two times it happened, it was when a family member of one of my sims walking up to the lot. - I haven't seen this happen anywhere else, only on this lot in this neighborhood PC SPECS Nvidia 4070 12gb i7-10700F 32GB RAM Windows 11
[CURRENT ISSUE] Several Issues after incomplete Installation
Update If you are on a Mac, please use this thread: 'Game Data Incomplete' and Grey Llama Thumbnails Replace Lots Steps there are a bit different as the repair on Mac currently only repairs the base game. Symptoms of this issue Invisible Sims in CAS Night sky showing up in CAS. Sims with question marks Missing world textures Base Game Worlds missing Roof and Floor patterns missing (Question Marks) Traveling to lots boots back to map/crashes (no Error Code) Multiple W on loading screen Llama Icons on loading screen This seems to be a rather common issue and seems to affect cc and not cc although it does seem only to occur on games that had cc in at one point. Suggestions how to solve this Check if all your CC is still compatible with the game Repair the game through EA app Delete the following file (it will recreate, it's a cache file): documents\electronic arts\the sims 4\localthumbcache.package Reset your game to factory settings Reinstall your game Reinstall Ea app, then repair again Delete Ea app cache files, then repair the game again For specific Sims: Change the skin tone and back. If you are using a certain adult mod that comes with adult skins/textures you need to turn off laptop mode and turn on uncompressed Sim Textures in your graphics options, This might also be true for certain cc skins.
Sims 4 Broken CAS
Whenever I start a new game the traits portion of cas is broken. I removed all mods, save file, tray files. I leave only the resource file. I delete all the caches and everything. But when I add one empty folder, labeled aspirations to my mods folder it breaks, and nothing is in the folder. Ive tried other folders with different labels and they work fine.
Household not loading
I cannot load into a single household in the save. I can load into lots to build, but if I attempt to load into a sim to actually play, I get stuck in loading and eventually the error screen pops up. I've attempted it with several households It recommends relaunching the game. Before removing my mods, I had better exceptions installed, and it was listing club_tuning as a 10% chance cause, though I am not at all sure what that means. The only thing I'd added to my game recently is Adventure Awaits. My game was working fine, but after splitting my household, my game crashed while building. I was able to get back in and finish building due to a save I'd made while building, but I then couldn't enter the household after finishing. So far I've: Tried just relaunching Took out all my mods and cc Repaired my game four times Uninstalled and reinstalled my game My save file {hopefully I did this right since I've never tried to share my save file before} https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OVG4FUBM23m-rEGxqsNC7YN1L4eHuUXi/view?usp=sharing
The Sims 4 Crashing Using Nvidia 4090
The Sims 4 keeps crashing whether I have any mods, saves, trays or even with nothing. It takes 45 minutes for the game to load without anything in my mods, trays and saves. I have the Nvidia 4080 graphics card, with 128gb of RAM and plenty of space on my SSD drive (more than 2tb remaining) on Windows 11 Pro. Now there's no excuses for this to happen. The game is clean but the loading time is taking ages thanks to the new patch and the game crashes. I've done the game repair, uninstalled the game, reinstalled it and so on. I can play other games perfectly on ultra settings such as Dying Light the Beast, Fall Out 4, Crysis and so on but can't play The Sims 4? The new December 2nd 2025 update is the worst update ever and I am beyond lost on how to play the game. Can someone please provide a solution? ThanksEA games
I wanna know who else understands the frustration of playing the Sims 4 mainly it hasn’t been working for over a year and a bit and this year they have done the most updates of all for the past 9 to 10 months my game has been running slow sometimes it doesn’t run at all it freezes and I’ve done everything to fix it. They told me to reboot the laptop. They told me to clear the cashier thing still it doesn’t work the first time it worked for an hour and then went back to normal and then since the update my game moves at 10 second right meaning our asked SIM to do something it takes 10 seconds or more for them to start doing the action during this time the in game timing is well off due to all the freezing and the glitching so when it’s time for my SIM to go to work or go to school, they don’t go to school until 12 o’clock in the afternoon and come back until 10 o’clock at night I have tried everything to fix this. I have asked for help multiple times and still I receive nothing. I want a refund and more at this point because there’s so much time that I have put into this game and ask for help and I met with this disappointment. [Title edit - CM]
My expansion packs, and digital downloads are not showing in my worlds list??
Hi, can anyone help me!! I have 11 Add on, and Discs too and I see them in my library and can not click on them, but some are digital and some are Discs. once in at the screen of my list of worlds they are not showing? I have reinstalled Origin.
[SOLVED] Game is crashing seemingly randomly, screen turns off for a few seconds
Solution: It was a driver issue caused by AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM). This feature is AI-powered and seemed to give too much GPU memory to the system resulting in too little memory for Sims. To turn it off, I had to go into the BIOS and turn off two settings under Advanced > PCIe subsystem settings, then disable "Resizable BAR Support" and "4G Decoding" (names can differ). I played one 2.5 hours session without any crashes after that. Original issue: Mods installed: Yes (issue happened without mods too, my mods are MCCC for save reminders and two own made CC items) Game version: 1.120.117.1030 DX11 System: Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, AMD Radeon RX 7600, 16 GB RAM, latest Windows updates are installed, GPU drivers are up-to-date. No crashes on Linux with the same savegame. My Sims 4 recently started to crash seemingly randomly on Windows 11. Due to crashes in the past, I decided to reinstall Windows 11 a month ago, Sims 4 was finally running like a charm with the same savegame I've been playing with for months. This has stopped about two weeks ago. The game now crashes randomly after playing 2 to 30 minutes, I barely reach one whole ingame day. When the game crashes, my two screens turn completely black for a couple of seconds. When they turn on again, I can see Discord reconnecting, I also lose connection to calls while playing. Other running apps don't seem to be affected. I usually have three apps actively running while playing, that'd be Discord, Vivaldi and Sims itself. Those crashes only happen when Sims is running, so I don't think another app is causing the trouble. So I started analyizing the issue and here's what I got: Windows Event Log: Whenever Sims is crashing, an info of type "Application Popup" is logged a second before which says "not sufficient virtual memory, the pagefile will be increased" The pagefile's size is managed by Windows on the C: drive with 700 GB of free space. The issue persisted when changing the setting to "no pagefile" or "fixed size" of 1-16 GB. Performance Monitor and Task Manager running while playing Sims: no shortage of memory or memory leaks of any app are visible, the memory is constantly at about ~13/15.2 GB without increasing over time. Deleting cache files in the Sims directory didn't gave me any luck. The lastCrash.log file contains a memdump of around 48 KB which I can't decrypt. I'll attach it here. Hopefully someone can help me as it is really frustrating to lose progress over and over. 🙏Build mode keeps breaking my game?
Not sure what’s causing this. I play with quite a few mods and cc, everything was working fine and I closed the game and downloaded some more cc and a new mod. Opened the game and went to build mode and tried to close a “den” if you will, that was built by someone on the gallery in the back porch area around pool. Everytime I do this, the game crashes but doesn’t close, I just can’t sell anything or interact with anything and time is frozen. But it’s like only when I try to close the den or something? I’m confused, so I took out the cc and mod I just installed because everything was working fine prior, and it’s still doing it. Driving me crazy.. any ideas?
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