@sammy4eva The inability to activate the game is unlikely to have anything to do with your laptop's hardware. The crashing you get when the game does work could be about the hardware or drivers, not that anything's broken but that adjustments are necessary to make the game work with Sims 3. For that angle, please run a dxdiag and attach it to your reply.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/
Please also let me know whether you're currently still seeing the activation error, and if so, whether you've noticed any pattern to when the game works and when it doesn't. For example, maybe it works the first time you try after restarting your PC (or opening the EA App) but not later.
I finally got progress with getting the game to run!
After not being able to see the sims launcher screen...again. I went back and cleared out the Microsoft edge cache...again. Still gave me a bad activation. So I went digging in my files to see if there was any crash logs from a suggestion of a friend. Found a "backup error 12.sims3.bad file" and research on that led me to delete the corrupted save files with the bad tag attached.
The load times are longer than I remember though. About 5 minutes (Not kidding, timed it.) just to get into the save selection screen. The main save I am worried about saving...never stops loading. It gets to like 98% of the way and just keeps loading. Never freezes. I was able to watch 2 full episodes of a show while I was waiting (about 30-40 minutes each) and it was still loading.
A new save I just started seems to be doing fine though (knock on wood).
@sammy4eva The save that isn't loading might be corrupted beyond repair, but there are steps you can try to fix it. First, try loading the backup copy of the save. In Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3 > Saves, you'll see a folder with the save name and another one with the same name and a .backup extension. Rename the save and delete the .backup, so the folder name ends in .sims3 , and you'll be able to select it at the Main Menu.
Please also delete any files in CurrentGame inside this same Sims 3 folder. The CurrentGame folder should always be empty unless you have a save loaded. Delete the cache files every time you quit as well, at least while troubleshooting. For reference, they are:
If this doesn't help, and you're willing to use a few mods, I'd recommend adding NRaas ErrorTrap and Overwatch. It's possible they could correct whatever problem is preventing this save from loading, and they're very helpful overall, cleaning out junk data that would otherwise accumulate and possibly corrupt your new saves as well. Neither one requires user input. More information is here:
