Hi since I built my new pc in December I have not been able to get the Sims 3 to work. I am getting the "a serious error has occurred while loading world" error when trying to start a new game or load an existing one and it won't let me play at all. I have tried turning off firewall, pausing syncing on one drive, taking ownership of documents on command prompt. Nothing has worked. The only thing that "worked" for a few days was creating a local windows account on my pc but it was taking up alot of storage and was creating issues with shared files and applications between accounts and I had to delete it and scrub it from my registry and file system completely to fix the issue. I don't want a local account. I want one account on my pc with my microsoft account attached to it. I don't want to have to deal with a second account and all the issues and confusion with it just to play one game that should work on my main account. Every other sims game works on my main account. This includes The Sims and The Sims 2. I do not mean the re-releases, I mean I got the original games working on my PC with workarounds and hacks and mods. It is just The Sims 3 that refuses to work. The only time i got to play it was for a few days with the local account that I don't want to have to re-create. Now you might wonder why I haven't just managed the backup settings for onedrive for the sims 3 or the documents folder but I have indeed tried that, and every time I try to go into onedrive and change settings to not backup documents folder it doesn't even give me the option, it looks like I might have to uninstall icloud or something but it looks like the folder isnt even backing up anyway so how could that fix anything? Gaining the ability to toggle something off that isnt even on.. how could that fix the issue? I have added a photo below of exactly what I encounter when attempting this, as you can see it won't even let me click on any files and according to them, DOCUMENTS ISN'T EVEN BACKED UP AS IS. This doesn't even make sense as onedrive is clearly the culprit seeing as making a local account "fixed" it. Also, according to command prompt, the directory for my documents folder does NOT include Onedrive in the path, which baffles me further as how is onedrive even the problem then. At a loss at what to do. Im afraid to do anything too drastic and irreversible that could cause other issues and/or not even work at the end of the day. Please help me.
I had the same issue. If you don't really care about your save files this could help because at least you'd get to play again. First of all, (if you are using origin) locate the file i.e. go to origin, click on sims3 and then click on "manage" then "view properties". "Open Folder" to the install location. If it opens to a C: location, check what folders are available. If this location seems to be lacking folders or seems to just have EP0# folders with no Saves folder or other, check your Microsoft OneDrive and look for the Electronic Arts folder and locate the sims 3 folder inside. If this folder contains a saves folder and/or others that were missing from the C: location; copy paste it from the OneDrive location to the C: location and then permanently delete the files from OneDrive (make sure to have a backup on a flashdrive just in case). Start the game to check.
IF the "Open Folder" takes you directly to OneDrive, (make a backup of the files on a flashdrive) permanently delete the Electronic Arts folder then start the game.
My save file had Dragon Valley content that disappeared after I did this so I think EA did something to their file confogurations. I'm not sure.
I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong but at least I can start a new game.
Edit: I went to install all the extra content from the website and it stopped working again.
I tried that but I don't think there is supposed to be save files in this location. The save files are in documents, the actual install of the game is on the :C Drive. I also put my documents directory back in its original location since moving it did nothing.
This is what's in my onedrive from what I can see. Nothing Sims 3 related.
