Sims 3 expansion won't download

same ☹️

For everyone reading, I know that EA people have been investigating this issue.  Judging from the time it's taken to address other Sims 3 issues, the lack of a response here doesn't mean that this particular problem has been forgotten or that no one cares.  It's probably just that no update is available.

Sims 3 issues do get fixed; I can think of two major ones this year that were in fact addressed, eventually.  (And updates from EA people were somewhat sporadic but always showed up when there was any new info.)  But the EA App has a lot of problems—just look at the other threads on this forum—and perhaps not a large-enough team to address them all in timely fashion.

@Ceisda62  For the disappearing content problem, please post in the Sims 3 PC tech forum:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/bd-p/the-sims-3

So I was having lots of problems getting my Sims 3 Pets to download.  I finally got it to work and it plays just fine.  Only took me 7 hours to figure out.  I'm here to share what I had to do but will first list some things that might be important.

• I used this thread, a reddit thread similar to this one, and another EA thread to help with my game loading issue
• I have windows 11
• I have an ssd and a hhd in my computer, I save my files to my hhd so I sometimes had to create a folder as it set my ssd as the main download
• I have a new computer so I had no issue deciding to uninstall everything, in my opinion it helped.
• I have a 12th gen intel CPU, which doesn't allow the game to load after the menu launches.
• I had to download an even older version of origin and make changes to the xml file
• Only 1 dlc wouldn't load, and I'm unsure if it's related or not, but it was specifically the Sims 3 Pets Limited Edition

The very first thing I did after I tried downloading origin and it wouldn't auto install my pets dlc was I went in and cleared the cache of origin and then loaded it back up and this time it did start downloading my pets dlc (look up clearing origin cache if you need help.)  The issue that I then experienced was it only going to 21% with a download of 0mb/sec and I couldn't access the origin app to fix this.  It was also verifying my sims 4 game and dlc every time I opened origin. So I decided to uninstall everything I had from EA: sims 4, what I could install of the sims 3, the EA app, and the origin app (if you decide to do this make sure to make backups of your town saves if you want to keep them.)  I restarted my computer and then reinstalled both the EA app and the origin app.  I tried the method in this thread a couple more times and a few different ways including downloading only the sims 3 and the pets dlc.  This resulted in the same as before.  I could get origin to start the pets dlc download but it wouldn't finish. 

After way too many hours or the origin method, I looked for a different thread and found a reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims3/comments/13qcjs2/cant_download_pets_on_ea_app/) that was similar except it showed a way to bypass the EA message that pops up on origin, allowing me full access to origin to download what I needed.  In the thread there is a link to a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xf3-dphNe8) or text.  I put the link for the video as I found it easy to understand but I also put the link for the thread if someone wants to look at it, it should be the first reply. It's a step by step video so I won't include that here to save space.  Follow exactly as he does and it should work perfectly, just don't do anything in origin except download your games/dlc because it can cause a pop up to install EA and makes origin useless so you'll have to uninstall and redo all the steps again to bypass the pop up.  

Now I tried just downloading the sims 3 on EA and then closing out completely and going into origin and downloading the pets dlc.  This resulted in exactly the same as before except I could pause and unpause the download which allowed me to get to 45% and it would not go any higher.  So I tried something that couldn't be done unless I had access to origin, I downloaded only the sims 3 and the pets dlc through origin.  THIS WORKED.  My pets dlc downloaded completely.  I then closed out of origin completely and went back to the EA app and downloaded all the other dlc with no further problems with download.  I do create a folder every time I download a game and the normal download spot for origin games is in the origin folder.  I do not know if me creating a separate folder has anything to do with the downloads, I usually just create a folder in the EA app spot.

If trying this I would download all the packs that you can't download in the origin app and then go back to the EA app and download everything else.  This was also just my experience and I only had problems with 1 dlc so I can't say this will work for more than one.

My last issue was that it wouldn't load the game after I clicked play in the menu, that was because of my CPU.  If you are having that issue there are other threads dealing with that and you should look those up as someone made an open source patch.