EA App "Background Services Crashed" — Windows 11 25H2 (Build 26200.8246)

Please help. I haven't been able to launch my EA App and thus all games in the platform (mainly The Sims 3, my love) for a long time. However I tried to save it and whatever I've done is not working. Does this happen to anyone?? Also, whatever system this forum is using to detect spam is not helping. I'm not spam.

System info:

• Windows 11 Professional 25H2, OS Build 26200.8246
• EA App version 13.713.0.6226 (latest)
• No antivirus except Windows Defender

Problem: Every time EA App launches it shows "Background Services Crashed" and never gets past the connecting screen. Clicking "Run Update" confirms the app is already up to date, then closes. This has persisted across multiple clean reinstalls.

What I've already tried with help from ChatGPT and Claude.ai:

1. Multiple uninstalls and reinstalls of EA App
2. Full network reset — winsock reset, IP reset, DNS flush, release/renew
3. Confirmed WinHTTP proxy is clean (direct access, no proxy)
4. Cleaned all leftover EA registry keys under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Electronic Arts and HKCU\SOFTWARE\Electronic Arts
5. Deleted all leftover EA folders under %ProgramData%, %LocalAppData%, %AppData%
6. Fresh install from ea.com run as Administrator
7. Forced both EABackgroundService.exe and EADesktop.exe to always run as admin via AppCompatFlags registry
8. Stopped and restarted EABackgroundService manually via sc stop/start

Diagnosis from logs:

From EABackgroundService.log, the service starts successfully and connects to EA's servers (cloud config loads fine, no network errors). However netstat shows EABackgroundService.exe (running in Session 0) never binds to any localhost port, while EADesktop.exe (running in Session 1) starts separately and listens on its own ports. The two processes are in different Windows sessions and cannot communicate via IPC, causing the "background service crashed" error.

Key observation: This is a Session 0 isolation issue — the background service runs as a system service in Session 0 but cannot establish localhost IPC with the desktop app in Session 1. This appears to be a Windows 11 25H2-specific regression as the app worked fine on this machine before upgrading to 25H2.

Port exclusion ranges are clean (only ports 80 and 27339 excluded), no WSL, no Hyper-V, no Docker, no third party antivirus.