jessicajea An EA App update wouldn't cause this kind of issue with Sims 3, and there hasn't been a Sims 3 update in a while. What you've described, with your in-game settings reverting, sounds like an update for your graphics driver. Each time the driver updates, the Options.ini file resets, and this is the file that stores all your in-game settings.
Anyway, if you like, you can try rolling back the graphics driver. Click Windows key-X, select the Device Manager, expand Display Adapters, right-click your GPU (the dedicated card if you have a laptop with dual GPUs), select Properties > Driver, and you should see an option to roll back.
This will change your in-game settings again. I'd suggest loading only to the Main Menu and changing what you want, then quitting to desktop before loading your save.
If that doesn't help, or you don't want to roll back the driver, please provide a dxdiag. Click Windows key-R, enter dxdiag in the run box, wait for the scan to finish, click "Save all information," and save the file to your desktop. From there, you can attach it to a reply using the paper clip (Attachment) icon included with the other formatting buttons.
Having said all that, the game crashing when returning from a vacation world has been a common game issue since the beginning. It's not necessarily related to a system issue or any kind of update. I'd still like to look at a dxdiag to make sure there aren't any obvious problems, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were just the usual travel transition breakage we see so often.
