Last night I played and saved The Sims 3 with NO problem. I have Ambitions ,Late Night , Showtime , and Seasons extension packs also. After I closed Origin, prompted me to download the new EA app...
@indycutie Activating the testingcheatsenabled cheat by itself won't have any effect on your saves. It does what its name suggests—allows you to enable and use more cheats if you want—but nothing else. Some of the options that come with TCE enabled can be harmful in the right context, as can some of the other cheats that require TCE to be enabled first, but that's a separate matter.
Is OneDrive currently backing up the contents of your Documents folder? I think it might have been when you were here last, but the question is whether it is now. The fastest way to tell is to open a File Explorer window, right-click Documents in the left panel, select Properties > General, and look at the Location. Let me know whether OneDrive is in that file path or not.
If OneDrive is in fact running, please let me know how full it is. There should be a little cloud icon in the lower-right corner of your screen. Right-click that and select Settings, then Acccount, and you'll see the used and total OneDrive storage just under the email address.
I'm not suggesting you buy more storage if you're getting low. (And in fact I'm philosophically opposed to the idea, although other people can of course do what they want with their own computers.) This is just about determining whether OneDrive is contributing to the problem.
I did what you suggested, and it may be a One Drive...Cloud storage issue. When I created the 2nd account that I play The Sims on, One Drive is not set up on that account. Is there a way to clear storage from One Drive, or uninstall it , disable it or anything ?. Here are some pics of the 2 accounts. The 1 with the lower number is the one I don't use to play The Sims. I also included overall storage for the computer. I haven't tried to play the game yet , I need to know how I can clean out OneDrive storage without purchasing more, unless I have to. It seems this OneDrive is not synced to the other User account. But I don;t know what to do. Much needed detailed help !!!
@indycutie It's best to keep OneDrive away from your Sims 3 content, so as long as you're only playing on the account that doesn't have OneDrive set up, you're fine in that regard. The reason I asked about this first is that the next step I'm going to suggest gets more complicated with OneDrive in the picture.
You don't actually need to clean out any OneDrive storage for Sims 3's purposes, that is unless you installed the game itself into one of OneDrive's folders. Just to be absolutely sure, please open your EA App game library, click Sims 3, select Manage > View properties, and you'll see the install location:
(That's for Sims 4, obviously, but the principle is the same.) If you see OneDrive in the file path, stop here and let me know.
Otherwise, please go into Documents > Electronic Arts and rename the Sims 3 folder. This will prevent the game from reading that folder and all its content, but your saves and everything else inside will be intact, just not usable for the moment. Open the launcher to spawn a clean folder, then try to start a new save in Sunset Valley. If that doesn't work either, stop here and let me know.
If the Sunset Valley save works, install a fresh copy of one of your custom worlds into the new folder and try loading a new save there. If that also works, copy one of your saves from the old Sims 3 folder (that you renamed) to the new one. (Right-click and Copy, then right-click in the blank space and Paste.) Saves are located inside the Saves folder, with each save having its own subfolder. Since you're copying and pasting rather than dragging and dropping the save, you don't need to worry about missing Store or custom content in that save. The original will still be intact while you experiment on the copy.
The idea here is to try to isolate the source of the problem and go from there. So whenever you get to a step that doesn't work, let me know what it is, and I'd also like to see the error message you're getting.
@puzzlezaddict I've gotten as far as playing a saved game on Sunset Valley. None of my Custom Worlds, Downloads, old Saves are on the launcher. When I tried to use a fresh copy of a World, it says it already exists. Also a save in the saved folder won't work, it says the World content cannot be found. All my Extensions are there, but nothing else. Even my Library didn't show up when I loaded Sunset Valley. That's where it's at right now. I haven't gotten any error messages, and onedrive isn't on there at all. Maybe I did something wrong....??? but all went well up to this point.🤔
@indycutie Did you rename the old Sims 3 folder in Documents > Electronic Arts? What you're describing sounds like what would happen if you skipped that step. Renaming the folder means your saves won't even show up as options, and neither will any world you've previously installed.
@puzzlezaddict Yes I did rename the file. Today I opened the game on my 1st(main) acct., and everything was there except for the Sims I had made with "testingcheatsenabled), and the Worlds I put them in were also gone. I've had several successful Saves and with no " onedrive" synced, it's so far so good. If you can, share with me again the steps to creating a different user account, please. In case I may need it in the future. I'm probably going to close the 2nd account I made... Thanks!
The two important keys are that the account is local (not linked to your Microsoft sign-in), and that the account has admin rather than standard permissions.
@puzzlezaddict OK, thanks..but awhile back you gave me directions how to move the Sims3 files over to the other account. It was a copy/paste or something. I looked back on here for the instructions and couldn't find them, but that's what I'll need.. Please and Thank you
@indycutie The short version is, move everything you want to keep here:
C:\Users\Public
And retrieve it once you're in the new account. This folder can be accessed by opening a File Explorer window, clicking This PC in the left panel, double-clicking the C drive, and opening Users.
Please do test the game in the new account before transferring any content. If it doesn't work even then, stop there and let me know. Otherwise, add your old content a little at a time so you find out right away if there's a problem.
If you add your installed content, not the downloads but the files in DCCache, InstalledWorlds, etc. to the new folder, and the content doesn't show up, it's best to remove those files and install everything fresh.
Here's a description of everything in your user folder:
@puzzlezaddict I copied this info down for future reference. For now everything is working well with the main account, and I hope it does. If anything else occurs I will post the issues then. My fingers are still crossed.... Thanks again😀