Re: sims 3 crashes at loading screen

omg i love you!!!!!! you have restored my faith in the sims 3 lol. thank you so much it works perfectly!

okay im back. the same issue happened again :-( i dont want to have to keep restarting from scratch. is there any way i can still access the old save data and put it back into the game after i move the folder out?

@mandee_mack  Yes, you can copy the folder for a particular save into the new user data folder.  Each save has its own folder in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves, and they're labeled by the name you use for that save.  There's also a second copy with a .backup extension, which contains the files from the second-to-last time you saved.  If you ever need to restore a backup, you can delete the .backup extension and change the name (so you don't have two folders with the same name in the same location), and it will be available to load from the Main Menu.

It sounds like you might be downloading bad custom content from the Exchange.  This is common—some bad cc sticks to uploads, and many creators don't know, or didn't know at the time, that they had any in their own folders.  If you're interested in downloading a lot of content, you may want to check it out in a clean folder first.  You can install it, check it out in-game, and make sure the launcher is still working.  Definitely scroll through the launcher's Installed Content tab looking for any items you didn't mean to download: you might see something that doesn't belong, or the launcher might crash.  Either way, you'll know not to install that particular content into your main user data folder.

It's pretty easy, once you get the hang of it, to move your main Sims 3 folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts (or rename it temporarily), open the launcher to spawn a clean folder, download a couple items you'd like to use, install them and test, then trash the new folder and put the old one back when you're satisfied.  It's also a lot easier than starting from scratch with your custom content every time.

@puzzlezaddict Hi! I know it's been almost three years since you replied to the question, but I need some more help please. I did what you said and the game still crashes. Can you help please?

Okay, it works but it keeps closing and I have to reenter like three times just to get to the main menu. Know how to help?

@sammycorn1234  Are you specifically playing in a clean Sims 3 folder, or have you added any content to that folder?  When you say the game closes, do you mean it actually crashes, or is it just minimizing and you need to bring up the game window again?

At first, I added nothing, but then I added the no-intro mod and nothing happened. For your second question, it just minimizes and I have to re-open window.

@sammycorn1234  Try telling the game to open in windowed mode.  Go into Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3, open options.ini, ctrl-F to search for fullscreen , and set it to 0 (zero).  If this works, you can go back to fullscreen mode at the Main Menu, but at the same time, set the game to run at the same resolution as your monitor.

@puzzlezaddict Thanks for the help! I will have to wait to try it because I won't have access to the computer the game is on for almost 2 weeks, but once I do I will try it and reply to this again if I still have proble

Hello, please could you help me out with this problem. My game loads at the screen and then the very last second the launcher will crash while being close to opening the game (so if i click on playing a family or trying to make a new sim in the menu option it will load then at the very last second the green bar thing will crash the game), and then it will exit out of it entirely. I recently had a problem with not being able to access my NRAAS mods and I just did the whole mod folder over again like deleted everything from scratch. The last time this happened, I literally deleted the entire sims 3 folder which caused me to lose CC and it took me like 2 whole days to get my game to where I wanted it to be with CC and mods. Is there anyway I can get rid of this issue without having to start from scratch again? 

@Kailin116  Instead of deleting the entire Sims 3 user folder, please just move it to your desktop, which will allow the game to generate a new folder.  If you can play normally in the new folder, you can start adding content to it from the old Sims 3 folder.  Keep testing as you move the data so you find out which files cause the crashing, and we can go from there.

It works!!!! Thannnnkkkk you so much. I was downloading old * mods from like 2009 and not seeing if they were compatible🤓. Now my game doesn't crash!!! thank you!!!!!