Crashing on travel and/or exiting to main menu.

Ordinarily I would say that you shouldn't attempt world travel without NRaas Traveler, Overwatch, and ErrorTrap in play; they replace the often broken in-game travel (and world move) transitions with one that is less prone to breakage.

But this retreating to Main Menu thing causing a crash as well is concerning too and of course has nothing to do with transitions. Can we get some specs on at least one of these computer systems? A dxdiag report will do if you could run one, upload it to pastebin.com, and provide a link. If your game is running fine otherwise, there could still be some driver or other related conflict getting in the way here.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information

FYI, the Repair Game feature of Origin on TS3 doesn't really do anything except fix the relationship between Origin itself and TS3. Unlike with other games, it doesn't really "fix" the game files themselves. Reinstalling doesn't usually help in matters like this either I'm afraid.

Hi,

Does the crash still happen when exiting from gameplay to the main menu, right after launching the application? For troubleshooting assistance with crash-to-desktop issues you can consult the following EA Support pages:

https://help.ea.com/help/pc/game-crashes-to-desktop-on-windows
https://help.ea.com/help/the-sims/the-sims-3/black-screens-crashing-or-freezing-in-sims-3-try-windowed-mode

I PM'ed you the dxdiag igazor :)

Yes, the exit to main menu crash is instant, no matter the play time. I've even tried opening a fresh new town and then pressing it and it will crash. Other than this and the travel crash, my game runs perfectly fine, I can even save and save as without any problems. As long as I stay in the same neighborhood (no Uni, World Adventures or 'move neighbourhood' and never press exit to main menu then all is well. It's just... very odd.

EDIT: I hope this isn't a fluke but after disabling UAC and restarting my PC, I can now exit to main menu without crashing. I've tried it on my current save and a brand new one in a different world. I'm also now able to travel on vacation and attend Uni (I did download NRaas Traveler, Overwatch, and ErrorTrap), I haven't tried moving neighborhood but I'd hazard a guess that it should work also now. :)

"4utumn;d-934845" wrote:
I'm having the strangest problem lately with my Sims 3. I'm running with all expansions except Into the Future and patched to 1.69.43 via Origin. Every time I want to travel on vacation the game will crash to desktop (no error) during the loading screen, this will also happen if I want to move to another neighborhood. What's even stranger is that if I press the exit to mainmenu button the game will instant crash to desktop.

I'm running without any mods, I've tried moving out my Sims 3 folder so the games creates another one but it still has the issue. I've tried repairing on Origin, still no luck. I've done everything short of uninstalling the whole thing and reinstalling.

Just to add, this is happening on two separate PC's also.

Yes! That just started happening with my game, too! Was fine a couple of days ago, sent my sim on a vacation to Egypt, no problem, even though I was already having trouble with the game launcher not recognizing my password, so I couldn't log in. That was intermittent, sometimes it would take my password, but continued to show my Sim points as zero. Then, yesterday, the launcher stopped displaying its main page (the log-in, ads and Daily Deals) and the error stated the launch of the webpage the program was calling wasn't an error, it was being blocked from displaying from EA's side, that was VERY disturbing!

What I'm starting to think is Sims 4 is a dud to more than just me (that game is broken in so many ways, the only thing Sims about it is the name it carries), so players are going back to the truly fun earlier versions of the Sims and EA/Origin's getting desperate. They lock you into the Origin launcher no matter what you do to try to circumvent it, and it does nothing but add to the problems. That non-error-error message was revealing. If EA/Origin or whoEVER is responsible for the Sims franchise had any sense, they'd polish up the older versions with new content and EPs and throw Sims 4 in the trash where it belongs. Yes, Sims 4 is pretty, but that's it. If a Sims fanatic want true Sims-like play, they won't find it with Sims 4.

It's time us die-hard Sims 1/2/3 fans make some serious noise! I personally have purchased 22 Sims 3 offerings, EPs and Stuff Packs (everything but Generations), and just about everything they offer in the Sims 3 Store, but I'd happily buy more if there was more available. The Sims 3 could still be a real money-maker, if they'd allow it.

Killing the earlier versions of The Sims won't make Sims 4 any more appealing, only going back to the original Sims template will do that. The name is "The Sims", that means "simulated" as in "simulated humans", with simulated real world type interactions and abilities, something the Sims 4 lacks completely. I'm sorry, but the real world is more than chasing woo-hoo in front of anyone including your simmie's near-&-dear, with no fidelity to be had anywhere between anyone. (Where in the real world does THAT happen without immediate consequences?!) The original Sims was all about people interacting in real world ways to other people, the producers/designers of The Sims 4 forgot that.

Killing the good won't make the bad any better. It's one thing to stop offering support for the older versions, I can live with that, but screwing it up so I can't play it anymore is downright evil. Perhaps if I uninstalled Origin... hmmm...?

Sorry for the maximum verbosity rant, but I'm rather ticked-off.

Hate to resurrect this thread, but I have the same issue now. I've been playing my game just fine over the past week, and now suddenly I no longer am able to exit to Main Menu, nor am I able to travel neighborhoods (move to university or move to other neighborhood). What's strange is that I have not downloaded anything new nor have I updated or upgraded anything on my PC before facing these crashes now just a few days ago. Happens on all save files, new save file, etc.

I also tried disabling UAC like OP did to no avail, and also attempted running TS3 without CC from either the Packages folder and unticking the installed custom content in the launcher, still crashing.

"puzzlezaddict;c-17439010" wrote:
@mattdude411 It usually doesn't help, but try repairing the game in Origin, if you do use Origin to play. Open your game library, right-click on the Sims 4 icon, and select Repair.

If that doesn't do anything, please run a dxdiag, post it on some filesharing site like pastebin.com (the free version is fine), and link it here.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

This worked! I can now travel again to University and exit to main menu. Thanks guys for all of your help.

The Origin repair solved the problem for me too. Thanks

@pax1sw - The Launcher login and data display issues you are having can most often be solved by clearing the cache (history) and cookies on Internet Explorer, being sure to de-select the option to Preserve Favorites Website Data. For a visual: https://kb.wisc.edu/page.php?id=15141

It must be IE, even if you never use that as a browser yourself or don't have convenient access to it (Win 10) and have to root around to find it as the game still and always will use its resources. Not Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or the other browsers. Although it wouldn't hurt to try clearing the cache and cookies on those, it's usually IE that does it.

The OP here was having potential drive space issues where they had Windows installed and got serious relief by disallowing UAC as they said. EA isn't exactly killing off TS3, but time does move forward and those on Win 10 or with the newest of hardware, graphics card drivers, systems updates, etc., are running a 2009 game on 2018 (or something similar) systems and it does take some extra care and feeding to keep an older game like this one that has been officially out of development for four years now going.

@mattdude411 Try moving your entire Sims 3 folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop. When you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content. Start a new save, and test a couple of travel transitions as well as exiting to the Main Menu. Even if it works, quit, restart your PC, and test again, just to be thorough.

If you still get crashes, make sure OneDrive isn't automatically syncing the contents of Documents. You can disable it to test, or just tell it not to sync Documents.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/choose-which-onedrive-folders-to-sync-to-your-computer-98b8b011-8b94-419b-aa95-a14ff2415e85

@puzzlezaddict Did exactly that, moved to a random location in Sunset Valley, traveled around a bit, but when I tried to move to University it crashed. Same with moving to main menu... didn't change anything, not even in-game settings. I don't have OneDrive set up or activated. :/