Re: Game won't launch via Sims 3 Launcher - Activation?
@sammy4eva Your dxdiag lists a number of serious crashes of the graphics driver (LiveKernelEvent 141 is a video driver timeout), so the next step here is to do a clean uninstall and reinstall of the driver. Here's how:
The driver is the same for your iGPU and dedicated card, and it's the newest-available version from AMD. You can get a fresh copy here:
An intermittent issue with the activation error is definitely strange, and I'm not sure what to make of it. But perhaps the problem is your antivirus, especially if you use a third-party program. Try disabling it and going only with Windows Defender instead, at least for a couple days. Defender is fine as long as you don't do anything risky.
If that doesn't help, or you want to try something else first, try blocking Sims 3 (TS3.exe) in your firewall. The game should still work fine except for its connection to EA servers, which it uses to download Store thumbnails and maybe some other stuff you don't actually need. The idea here is that maybe a crash paired with this kind of connection is causing the temporary issue.
If this causes more problems, you can block the Store thumbnails from downloading by setting the FeaturedItems folder (in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3) to read-only, or creating a text file called FeaturedItems with the .txt extension stripped off. Either one would prevent the game from placing the content in this folder without any need to change your firewall settings.
