I read on reddit if you try to turn off shadows in the game while on a community lot or unowned residential lot and then load into a occupied lot then it worked!
JeolinThanks for the idea: it worked! I was at my wit's end with this game crashing and I went crazy for weeks going through the game files.
Here is what worked. I loaded Sims 2 and opened my neighborhood. Then loaded Create a Sim. Then I opened Graphics Settings and then set Shadows to "off". The game runs fine now!
This worked for me tysm, I was so confused 😭😓🙏
