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lozzomatic's avatar
lozzomatic
4 years ago

Sims 3 launcher not working. I press play and it crashes.

I've tried a fair few things, including some of what has been mentioned on other topics here. Computer is updated, graphics card too, same with Origin and from what I can tell Sims 3 is as well. I've tried compatibility mode in Windows 7, I tried running as admin, I tried Direct x 9, I downloaded the GraphicsCards and GraphicsRules SGR files but IDK what the hell I'm doing with them.

None of these have worked, and some things I'm worried about touching in case I break my new computer. 

Here's the specs-

12th gen i9-12900- RTX 3080- Windows 10 (I do not trust 11 and I am not interested in the upgrade)- I got about 2 TB of space in total on 2 hard drives with plenty of space for Sims 3 and many other games as I wish.

I think it's probably the 12 gen processor tripping me up here but I don't know how to activate Legacy Game Mode (or whatever it's called) or if it even works. Supposedly there was a patch to fix it so some other games could run but they all seemed to be newer or at least newer than Sims 3 in comparison. 

I'm an idiot with computers, I tried all I can, I have some idea of what might be happening but I don't know for sure.

Help me EA forums, you're my only hope.

pc
technical issues

3 Replies

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    4 years ago
    @lozzomatic wrote:

    Help me EA forums, you're my only hope.

    That's a lot of pressure, and I'm not sure I can handle it.

    All joking aside, it is in fact your processor that doesn't work well with Sims 3.  But it's simple enough to fix: you can either run Process Lasso and limit the game to one CPU core while it's loading, or you can use a PowerShell script someone posted.  Detailed instructions, from the same person who posted about both workarounds, are here (PowerShell script) and two posts down (Process Lasso):

    https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Sims-3-won-t-open-Alder-Lake-Intel-12th-gen-CPU/m-p/11185318#M249291

    You can find the script itself here:

    https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Sims-3-won-t-open-Alder-Lake-Intel-12th-gen-CPU/m-p/11144265#M249006

    You don't need to add new .sgr files or edit your existing ones, but if you want to get your GPU recognized, let me know.  It doesn't have much of an impact on performance, and you can still set the graphics options to whatever you want, but lots of players like doing it anyway.

  • lozzomatic's avatar
    lozzomatic
    4 years ago

    One thing I forgot to mention is that I can't properly get my graphics card recognised as I need to edit my DeviceConfig file. Of course the DC file can only be edited when my Sims 3 game boots up, otherwise it's blank. I can't get past the launcher, so the file remains blank and un-editable.

    I would prefer to have the card recognised even if the performance improvement is barely noticeable, but for now I'd just settle on it bloody working, lol

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    4 years ago

    @lozzomatic  You don't need to edit deviceconfig.log: it's just output, a report of how the game reads your hardware at the time of launch.  You could edit it to say absolutely anything, or delete it outright, and it would still be recreated with the same info the next time the game loaded.

    Please first make sure you can play at all (by using one of the workarounds I posted earlier) before editing the .sgr files, as the edits themselves occasionally cause problems.  If the game opens, great, you can move on to getting the card recognized.  Go into deviceconfig, copy the text between "Graphics device info" (about 25 lines down) and "Options" (about 40 lines down), and paste it here.  That will tell me how to identify your graphics card in the game's database.

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