First Time playing the sims 3 games in a long time. Didn't have any issues in the last opening but for whatever reason, it is giving me the black screen, no-load, crash treatment this morning. I op...
All Hail PuzzleAddict! Not gonna lie some of those steps made me a little (a lot) anxious about going through with it, but I did and It absolutely worked 🙂 I can't thank you enough. I was worried I would have to start from scratch and re-download everything. This trick absolutely did it and I was able to start my game both via my shortcut and via the launcher. Thank you again!!!!
@skinnymountain For now, please skip the workaround for playing without a disc. It's fine to launch the game from the desktop shortcut you have, but troubleshooting is simpler with fewer complicating factors. Once Sims 3 is working again, you can do what you like, although avoiding DRM features is not really something that can get support on an official EA site, even though you do legitimately own the game.
Anyway, please move the entire Sims 3 folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop. When you launch the game, if it launches, a clean folder will spawn with no content. Don't add anything to it yet; just see whether you can get far enough to start a new save.
If that doesn't help, try doing a clean uninstall and reinstall of your graphics driver. Despite the date on the current driver, you already have the newest one available from Asus. You can get a fresh copy of it here:
Next, take your computer completely offline—disable wifi and/or pull the ethernet cord—and double-click the DDU.exe. Take note of where the file will land, and click Extract. If it's easier, you can copy the path and then paste it into the address bar in a File Explorer window. Open the folder and then launch Display Driver Uninstaller.exe, and you'll get a message that you're not in Safe Mode. Click OK, then go to Options and enable Safe Mode dialog. Here's a screenshot of what your options should look like; make sure the box in red is checked:
Close options, and the DDU, and then open the DDU.exe again. For launch options, choose "Safe Mode (Recommended)," and then click Reboot to Safe Mode (you'll need your password, so find it before rebooting). Once you login, you'll see this:
In the blue box, choose GPU, then Intel if it's not already showing. Then click Clean and Restart (red box).
Once your computer has rebooted, now back in normal mode, run the driver install .exe as an admin: right-click on the download and select "Run as administrator."
Reboot again, go back online, and see whether the game works normally. If not, let me know.
All Hail PuzzleAddict! Not gonna lie some of those steps made me a little (a lot) anxious about going through with it, but I did and It absolutely worked 🙂 I can't thank you enough. I was worried I would have to start from scratch and re-download everything. This trick absolutely did it and I was able to start my game both via my shortcut and via the launcher. Thank you again!!!!
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