Re: My sims 3 game cannot start. It says an error during startup.
@aobadsul There are a few different causes for this particular error. The first and easiest thing to try is to drag your TS3 game folder out of Documents\EA and onto your desktop. If the game now launches, then you can start moving your content from your old game folder to the new one that will have been created in its place. Test after moving each batch of files, and if you get the error again, you'll know the issue is something in the last batch you moved.
If that doesn't help, try running Origin and Sims 3 as an administrator. Right-click on the Origin icon to see the option, and once Origin is open, do the same with the Sims 3 icon on your desktop.
If this doesn't help either, have you recently uninstalled any packs? This error is often related to broken registry entries. Did Windows recently update, or was there an update to your antivirus/firewall?
It would also be helpful to see a dxdiag on this computer. You can run one and attach the results directly to a post here.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/