@pinkdipi If and when you're ready to try again, please uninstall Sims 3 and the EA App with Revo Uninstaller (the free version is fine). This guide was written for Sims 4, but the options are the same:
Reinstall the game into a new folder that you create for just this purpose, on the root level of the drive of your choice, as described.
Hi!
You won't believe what happened. At least I don't.
Yesterday I just got an itch to try the game again for no particular reason. And then Windows asks me to troubleshoot. I thought "Like THAT has EVER helped", but pressed OK. It asked me something along the lines of "Do you want to run the application with Windows 8 compatibility?" I pressed OK - and voila! The game is now running. Just like that, after a whole day not touching the game, nor doing anything. Windows just randomly asked me out of the blue. I know for sure that I didn't touch THOSE setting.
This shall remain a mistery I suppose, but thank you very much again for being so willing to help me out and find a solution! ^_^
By the way I have installed Steam to be able to play Vivaland, but it won't run giving me an PLAYFAB_LOGIN_ERROR. What ever that means. I read that I need to wait, so I waited until next day. Next day same thing. Games hate me, LOL. So I can't report whether the game is a good competitor to Sims 3 - in building aspect at least. Thought maybe you'd be interested.
All the best wishes to you, firendly stranger! ^^/
@pinkdipi That is a very strange outcome, especially considering that applying a compatibility mode to Sims 3 generally doesn't accomplish anything at all. But it's almost always better to have a fix without an explanation than the other way around.
Good luck with the Steam issue. If I knew anything about that error, I'd try to help, but I don't think I've even heard of it before.
Hey!
Sorry to bother you again. Since you're knowledgable about system and stuff, could you kindly give your recommendations for what to look for in a PC to play Sims 3 with as little outside help as possible, meaning patches, mods and stuff? Would just adding RAM be sufficient, or do I need a better everything? You see, I think I enjoy growing and developing my city the most. I want to have a graveyard full of stories and ancestors, a town with lots and lots of houses and inhabitats in several generations and lots to do. I want to see the city being full with Sims going about they day. I was intirgued by a mod some one had made to make sims go out more. It was called something like Go outside? The idea of it was to push sims to go places as much as possible. You can imagine my computer didn't aggree with that ^^;;;
I'd be thankful for recommendations of RAM, video cards, proseccors and if there's anything else. A computer model? Laptops? I'm on a tight budget, so I prbably won't be able to afford much anything, but I'd like to understand more what the game REALLY needs to run smoothly and beautifully. I've seen some videos where they just say "I have that computer", but that doens't help me to understand what is necessary for it to work like butter.
Have a fun weekend! ^^/
@pinkdipi How tight is your budget? What you're looking for would only be possible with a whole new computer. I'm not saying that adding RAM would make no difference, because it would help with everyday use, as would installing a larger SSD, big enough to hold Sims 3's program files and user data. But there's only so much this laptops processor and graphics card can do, and neither one is upgradable.
The other part of this is that Sims 3 itself has some limitations due to the way it's built: both the game engine's faults and the fact that it's a 32-bit program mean you can't really have the overpopulated, well-developed save you're imagining. There just isn't a way to handle that much data at once, no matter how powerful your machine.
