Launcher Welcome Screen Blank!

megray04  Please clear Edge's IE data again, and at the same time, move or rename the Sims 3 folder in Documents > Electronic Arts.  Doing so will prevent your saves and other user data from loading, but that can be addressed later.  Just let me know whether this helps.

Hi,

Thank you for responding! I tried that and it is still blue. After a while it gives me this error message...

megray04  Try clearing Windows temp files, as described in the accepted solution here:

Re: My game won't connect to the internet. | EA Forums - 11829031

If this doesn't help, please create a new admin Windows account and test there.  The idea is to find out whether the problem is limited to your main account or more global.

I have tried both suggestions and it did not work... :(

Update: I can't even open the EA app. It thinks about it and then never opens

megray04  Please uninstall the EA App with Revo Uninstaller (the free version is fine).  Use the Advanced scanning method when asked.  Restart your computer, download a fresh copy of the App installer, and run it as an admin: right-click the download and select "Run as administrator."

This should help with the App issue at least.  But if it doesn't, or if the App starts working again but the Sims 3 launcher does not, can you test with a different network?  For example, if your computer supports wifi, you could set your phone as a mobile hotspot, using data rather than your home network, and connect to that.  I'd suggest clearing the temp files again before testing this.

I figured it out! It was because I was running a Windows 11 fresh install. I reinstalled Windows 10 and it works perfectly.

megray04  That doesn't make any sense.  I mean, I'm glad this helped, but Windows 11 should work fine with the launcher, and enough Sims 3 players are using it by now that we'd see a lot more reports if it were completely incompatible.  If you want to go back to 11 at some point, this should be fixable.

megray04  Would you or your boyfriend be willing to give a more in-depth explanation of this issue?  I've seen quite a few people with the blank launcher, and the standard practices only work for some of them.  I don't have the issue myself and therefore can't test.

Looks like the issue had to do with how a fresh install of Windows 11 handles registry settings differently from an upgrade. I just recently installed a new SSD and did a fresh install of Windows 11. After that fresh install is when the problem started. Before that everything worked fine. Its possible that  Windows 10 has a registry entry that tells the game what it can use to load the launcher menu. But a fresh install of Windows 11 probably doesn’t have that set up the same way. Since Sims 3 relies on Internet Explorer components and Windows 11 removes IE entirely in favor of Edge some registry settings might not have been configured right. When I upgraded from Windows 10 to 11 again I believe those settings carried over which is probably why it worked before. We can’t test or dig into it more since I wiped my computer before finding the solution but if anyone else has this issue checking registry settings related to IE components might be worth a shot!