My husband bought the game discs for me to avoid such problems, but at this point, I swear that Origin erases or disables the discs with their downloads. Similar to others, I can play music CDs and watch DVDs on my laptop, but TS3 will not reload the game from the disc and I have to download from Origin, which I do not want to do, because they automatically patch to 1.69, and that patch crashes my game.
Its like Apple getting caught slowing down old iPhones. EA/ Origin seem to kill old Sims games with the patch to make people buy the next version, but I refuse. I'll download Candy Crush or something!