Re: Screen goes black and Windows locks up

Yes, I am quite aware that my graphics card is quite old.  In computer age it's a dinosaur so if I don't want to throw away all the money I've invested in the franchise maybe buying a newer card would be the easiest path.  I have tried the other suggestions you've given already but I'll run thru them again.  Sometimes you just have to keep up with the times even when the hardware you have seems to be working just fine.  Got to keep those kids in China working.

Oh,  btw,  when I do try typing in that command prompt  my system spits back an error saying that DISM.exe/Online/Cleanup-image/Restorehealth doesn't exist as a legit command function or something like that.

DISM.exe/Online/Cleanup-image/Restorehealth is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. 

I am certain I've typed it correctly.

@FlamingoKicker  It looks like you left out the spaces in the command.  It should read like this:

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth

There are certainly other steps you can try before resorting to buying a new graphics card; I just wanted to mention that the driver might be the underlying issue because I didn't want to ignore the elephant in the room, so to speak.

Oh ok.  Well,  I tried that command line with spaces and that ran successfully (didn't find any errors).  I even launched Windows with a clean boot.   The Sims ran about 10 minutes without crashing to a black screen that way.

What other suggestions do you have before I go buy a new graphics card?  Even if the card doesn't solve my problems it probably won't hurt having something from this decade and that would be one more thing eliminated as a possible cause.

@FlamingoKicker  Did you also try a clean user folder and disable Game Mode and Game Bar?  They're both easy enough steps, and your dxdiag listed some errors with the XBox gaming overlay.

There are also a number of errors from Malwarebytes.  While merely having it installed and running the occasional scan should have nothing to do with this issue, if you have realtime protection enabled, it's worth turning it off while you play.  As long as you don't open anything aside from Origin and Sims 4, your computer should be safe.

If that doesn't help, please try playing while your computer is completely offline.  You can sign into Origin and put it in offline mode, then disable wifi and/or disconnect the ethernet cable before launching the game.  While it doesn't look like your particular issue would be related, it's an easy enough test.

From your description, it doesn't sound like the game is crashing exactly, but if you want to try setting Windows to generate a crash log, it's easy enough to check.  And the log should give more information about the freeze/crash itself.

• Hit the Windows key, type "command prompt" in the box, right-click on Command Prompt in the search results, and select Run as Administrator
• In the window, paste "reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\devenv.exe" /v DumpType /d 2 /t REG_DWORD" without the outside quotes into the box, and enter
• Launch Sims 4 and play until it crashes
• After it crashes, wait for any crash dialogs to finish
• Then hit Windows key-R and paste "%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps" without quotes into the box, and enter
• Upload the last .dmp file to a free filesharing site and link it here
• When you want to undo the auto crash log dumps, open Command Prompt as before, paste "reg delete "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /f" without the outside quotes, and enter

Don't worry if you don't find a crash dump though; it just means that the game isn't crashing so much as locking up your system.  That's useful information as well.

So my computer has to be up and running to save the *.dmp data to a file?  Is this correct?   My problem is when the machine locks up or "crashes" I can't save anything.  I have to hard reboot my machine by turning it off and then on so how can I save the data?  Otherwise, I tried all the other suggestions (turning off my antivirus,  completely disconnecting from wifi, and turning off my Game Mode and Game Bar,  moving my game files off to my desktop, and spawning a "clean"  game folder.

None of those things changed anything.  It still causes my screen to lock up and go black after about 10 minutes of game play.  I currently have a new graphics card on order and should receive it in a week or so.  Maybe that will fix my problem.

@FlamingoKicker  There are different kinds of lockups, some which only prevent you from interacting with the computer while it's still running (to some extent) in the background.  So it's possible for the crash dump to be written even if you can't see anything happening.  It's also possible that the system is totally frozen and no file is created; that's why I said don't worry if you don't get a crash dump.

If you'd like to wait until you have the new graphics card to keep testing, that's understandable; let me know if you'd like any more help now or once it's installed.

The vendor called me today and they will be shipping it today so hopefully it won't take too long.  I looked and no .dmp files were created.  Thanks for your help.

I tried something last night that could shed some light (or possibly not) on the situation.   I had noticed that the game allowed me to play for about 10 minutes before crashing so I thought I'd try something different when I got to the ten-minute mark instead of just waiting for the game to crash.

I had my sim jump in the car and travel to a different lot and thought "oh it's going to crash anyway" but instead it just kept playing on the other lot.  I played that lot for 10 minutes, jumped back in the car and traveled to another lot.   In this way I played for about an hour until I forgot to keep track of time and the game crashed.

I have no idea why it makes any difference why you can only play on a given lot for 10 minutes or why this suddenly changed in the game.  I've had this same graphics card and system for decades and never had a problem with the Sims before the recent "update".

I have no problems with any other software either so it doesn't seem like the hardware is failing or something logical like that.

I thought maybe if I reset my system back to before the update maybe everything would be set back to when it worked but then I remembered I'd installed Snowy Escape so the game would demand I update Origin to be able to play that, right?  I can't uninstall just that pack from the massive Sims 4 software pack?

@FlamingoKicker  You can in fact uninstall Snowy Escape, but you probably can't go back to a previous patch level.  A system restore point usually doesn't include enough data for that: it might contain your user files from that date, but probably not the entire pre-patch Sims 4 install.

If you're merely looking to remove Snowy Escape though, you can just delete the EP10 folder from [game install location]\The Sims 4.  While this is officially unsupported, the worst that can happen is you need to repair the game.  Origin will probably try to redownload the missing pack at least once though, and more often if you have auto game updates enabled, so be sure to alt-tab back to Origin from the Main Menu and cancel any download in process.

Your description sounds like some data is being messed with after ten minutes of not changing, and loading a different lot is enough of a change to that data to reset the timer on whatever process is interfering.  One possible culprit is OneDrive trying to sync the contents of Documents; another is a cleaner app that tries to remove temp data.  You could address each possibility individually; if you don't get anywhere, it's worth trying to play while your computer is offline as well, that is if you haven't already.

Oh  yeah... I tried playing 'off-line"  or disconnecting from wifi and didn't seem to make any affect.

@FlamingoKicker  Alright, let me know about OneDrive and any cleaner app you might be running.  I guess it's also possible that the game is running out of some resource that is reset by changing lots, but resource use tends to not be that predictable, as in, it might take ten minutes to go over the limit one time and 15 another.

I wasn't sure what OneDrive even was but looked it up and I don't use that at all.  I have CCleaner on my machine.  Should I disable that next time I test my game?  It has never been a problem in the past.

@FlamingoKicker  Yes, please disable CCleaner and see whether it helps.

They claim it isn't a program that will run automatically and there is no way to just disable it.  

Well I tried it anyway and of course it didn't make any difference.  Probably should have realized this earlier when I did a clean boot and disabled all unneeded programs and that didn't help.

@FlamingoKicker  You'd be surprised what still runs in a clean boot.  (I've heard of everything from MSI Afterburner to RGB software.)  Anyway, the ten minute interval is quite strange, and I'm having trouble thinking of what might cause it.  In case it catches something odd, hardware monitoring might be useful.  If you want to try, download hwinfo from here:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

You don't need to install anything if you don't want to; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you want.  (If you would like to install, be sure to click the green button, not the orange one.)  Restart your computer, and don't open any other apps.  Launch hwinfo, choose "sensors only," and click the icon that's a sheet of paper with a + sign to start logging.  Save the file to your desktop for easy access later.

Wait five minutes, then launch Sims 4 and play until your computer locks up.  The log should still be intact up to that point, but please let me know how long the interval is between when you start hwinfo and when the lockup happens, in case the log cuts off early.  You can upload the log to a third-party free filehosting site and link it here.  Please leave it in .csv format, or if you use OneDrive to share, please compress it in .zip format instead.

For some reason I tried making a new family in the big city neighborhood . I think that's Seasons with all the festivals and for whatever reason without changing anything else it played perfectly (although when it snows in winter the game really lags a bit),  But if I go back to the other neighborhoods like Snowy Escape its still messed up and crashes so maybe it's just something about that neighborhood install?  Maybe uninstall and reinstall it?  I've run repair on the base game but I have problems getting thru all the rest of the expansions without the repair function giving up the ghost and stopping.

@FlamingoKicker  You can try deleting the pack and redownloading it; that should (in theory) give you a clean error-less version of the pack.  Clear Origin's cache first:

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/

Then open the Sims 4 install folder, which, unless you changed the default install location in Origin, will be here:

Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 4

Delete the EP10 folder (Snowy Escape is the tenth expansion released), open Origin, click on the Sims 4 icon, select More > Expansion Packs, and download SE again.

Yep. that's pretty much what I did.  With Snowy Escape offer my machine the game runs fine.  Add it back and guess what?  It crashes to a black screen.   That tells me it has something to do with the pack, OR it has something to do with the update (more likely)  that EA gave us to work with the pack cause I ran the pack for about a week when it first came out and I didn't have any issues but apparently some players did so they were able to get EA to make changes for them but those things must have affected my game negatively.

I think it is about time for them to abandon Sims 4 and move on to Sims 5 where they can start the whole money pit again.

@FlamingoKicker  I'm sorry to hear that even a new download of Snowy Escape isn't helping.  This is still with no mods or custom content, right?  A lot of mods were broken by the SE update, and some turned out to be incompatible with the pack's content even though they appear to work fine otherwise.

At any rate, you might want to check back after the patch that's released ahead of the next pack.  Those patches also include at least a few fixes for known issues with other content.

If you're tired of uninstalling and reinstalling, you can instead disable SE, or any pack you don't want to load, in Origin:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2017/03/disable-single-packs/

I haven't had much further success with anything I've tried.  Thought I'd made some headway earlier this week but then just as soon the old black screen returned for no reason (with or without sound enabled, with or without mods,  clean install, etc.)  I definitely will try disabling SE cause everything logically points at that being the problem.  I wonder if there is just much more graphic demands from that pack than others and that's what's causing the crashes.  If that one doesn't load could that make any difference?  Who knows?  At this point it could be the cycle of the moon.

@FlamingoKicker  I'm still happy to read an hwinfo log, if you want to make one.  Perhaps something will jump out that makes it more clear what's happening with your computer.

I tried somethings today like disabling SE but of course, that didn't do jack.   Then I got the idea of seeing whether I could play other Origin games or if they'd crash too.  I have several Non-Maxis games so I played them and they had no problems and I enjoyed playing something besides the Sims for an afternoon but at the end I went back to see about the Sims and not only did Sims 4 still crash but on a whim I wanted to see if Sims 3 would still play and it crashed but Sims 2 played fine although I doubt I will be playing it regularly anytime soon.  I just keep it around for nostalgia.  Would be interesting if EA would put Sims 1 on Origin but that's another issue.

I will have to scroll back thru and find out about that hwinfo.log and run one.  I must have missed that email or had other things on my mind.

OK, I got the hwinfo app and ran it but something didn't work right on my computer cause it would crash to the blue screen of death each time I had the log running and then tried to launch Sims 4.  Maybe my computer is just too old or the CPU isn't powerful enough to handle the program?