The EA App is Stuck On Preparing

So my daughter had this same / similar problem. I'm going to tell you the solution we found, but first let me say the fact that no one from EA or elsewhere posted this as a solution as it almost appears as if it should be a known issue is pathetic, but typical and expected from EA.

Anyways here it is. We had the problem on her computer with a Sims 4 update just being stuck on "Preparing" forever. As in hours. No progress no error, it was just stuck there. We tried reboots, we tried clearing cache, etc... nothing worked.

FInally I poked around in the app settings and found a check box / slider bar to enable automatic downloads and downloads in background. Immediately after enabling both it went from preparing to downloading and the update installed successfully.

Why would you need this on? Doesn't make sense. Why would manually selecting to update with these settings off cause it to fail? No idea, and it doesn't make sense. But crappy software works in crappy ways.

I don't know if this will work for others, but it worked for us despite making no sense and after hours of frustration and annoyance.