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Comrade825's avatar
8 years ago

Crash after intro

I got back into playing the game again played for a couple hours, saved and quit. When I came back, I could not skip the intro. I waited for it to end only to find that it leads to a black screen. If I tried to alt-tab, I could no longer click on the game to reopen it. I thought this was a result of a corrupted save I had because I deleted mods that were used in my save, but I created a new family and the same issue is happening once again. I have done the "clean install" in which I deleted the TS3 folder in Documents but no prevail. However the strange thing is if I delete that folder restart the game without my save it works just fine. I was able to then replace the save in the folder and play but then when I reopened the game after playing the same issue happened again. I can no longer play the game because of this and I'm afraid I may never be able to again. Please help me, I really love this game and I was infuriated when I discovered this. All my hours spent on my family is gone because the game doesn't even start.

8 Replies

  • roberta591's avatar
    roberta591
    Hero (Retired)
    8 years ago

    @Comrade825  As the exact structure of a save file is known only to the programmers, once a save becomes corrurpted it usually can not be saved. Some mods and cc affect the game core files and can not be removed by simply deleting the mods folder. What you do is search for how to recover a previous save and see if that works. This game does not like to be reinstalled. Frequently the issues are caused by user data. This can be fixed by doing a factory reset without reinstall. Does this happen to all games or just the one save game - If you start a new game can you save and reload? Is your computer a pc or mac?

  • Comrade825's avatar
    Comrade825
    8 years ago

    Yes, I have made a new game and saved it and it did the same thing. I have a PC running Windows 10 that well exceeds recommended requirements.

  • Comrade825's avatar
    Comrade825
    8 years ago

    No, I'm not using Onedrive. I've attached the DXDiag, but I've ran the game before without any problems. Is it a possibility that it is the latest Nvidia driver? On a side note, I reinstalled the game while the documents folder was deleted, replaced my save and was actually able to play. I saved it and was able to come back but on the third time around no dice.

  • Comrade825's avatar
    Comrade825
    8 years ago

    I made a discovery today. I alt tabbed the game out of hopelessness while searching for answers and minutes later, the game opens back up at the menu. I'm not exactly sure why the load time is like that, I have the game installed on an NVMe SSD. While the game is frozen, my HDD is at 100% usage even though it's not even installed there, it takes about 5 minutes for this to stop and then it goes back to normal and the game finally opens.

  • roberta591's avatar
    roberta591
    Hero (Retired)
    8 years ago

    @Comrade825  I'm guessing the issue is the computer is running out of resources (1.9Gb free space could (probably) is the problem. My guess is the game is trying to create temp files on the game default device (E?) free space. Are you running dual monitors? And are the monitors different ((they are aren't they). And your using two different technologies to connect them. What you are seeing is something (the game or the video system) is swapping data in and out of virtual memory. IMO you are asking the 1070 to do two much. Your video drive is not WHQL. Is the video drive a beta version? Did you try to run the game with just one monitor running? The game is a 32 bit game and as such can not access more then 4Gb  of memory - actually the game will probably only use about 2GB even with large address aware enabled because of compilers and other restrictions. When the 32 bit application runs out of room it will use virtual memory (hard disk space) as memory (slow memory) and when there is competition for the memory (disc) space what you see is a lot of disk activity. Something is not configured right for your setup.

  • Comrade825's avatar
    Comrade825
    8 years ago

    I'm not exactly sure what could be improperly configured and I have plenty of disk space as well I have read that it may be stalling because it needs to access the Documents library in the C drive but installing it there once again yields the same result.

  • roberta591's avatar
    roberta591
    Hero (Retired)
    8 years ago

    @Comrade825 The game does need access to the user documents folder only because that the default where the game creates the user data for the game. You don't install the game there but the game creates a folder there for the user data. When I talk about operating system resources I'm talking about the buffers, page file, and other temp files created by the operating system. The Sims 3 is a 32 bit application and as such can not access more then 4Gb of memory. Actually the game itself will use only about 2Gb of memory even with LAA (large address aware) enabled (which one of the patched enables). This is because of the compilers used can only calculate jump instructions within the perimeter define by the compiler (this is a simple as I can make this). After that the program pages blocks of memory to virtual memory (disk space). This happens regardless if you have a 32 bit system or a 64 but system. Having a 64 bit operating system does not make a 32 bit application 64 bit. The 64 bit operating system uses an emulator (WOW64) to emulate a 32 bit operating environment. You have am unusual hardware setup that requires a lot of resources (again resources is not just memory - your system has to be configured right allocating the right hardware to the right hardware). You are running one monitor at 1080p resolution and the other high then 1080 but lower then 4K. This is requiring a lot of memory for frame buffers alone. You may be having the problem that many have trying to play 4K games. Streaming 4K movie is not the same as playing a 4K game. Playing a 4K game requires some hefty hardware. The first time I tried making a 4K gaming computer I had the fastest Intel I7 proc I could get my hands on and a Nvidia GTX 980 graphics card. While that handled the HTC VR, I was struggling to get 20 FPS when playing a 4K game. When I SLI'd 2 Nvidia GTX 980s I was able to get a steady 30 FPS running a 4K game. If you want to play 4K game in 4K resolution you better have deep pockets. It looks like your buying another SSD to solve the problem of no free space an the other SSD and your using a 2T conventional drive as a system drive and your running dual hd monitors. You have a very unusual setup. Years ago MSI (Micro-Star International) used to be on the bargain end of the table. It appears to be producing some nice motherboards but probably wouldn't be my first choice today. You have some nice hardware but IMO it is not setup properly to handle the hardware you have for the software you want to run.

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