Sims 3 Not Launching
I have spent this entire week reading through these forums and watching YouTube videos to try to get my Sims 3 game working. None of the fixes have worked. I am on the brink of giving up. I literall...
Forum Discussion
@divaisdancing One of the reasons I asked you to move the Sims 3 user folder to the desktop was to remove all your mods and custom content. It's best to start with a clean folder, nothing at all added to it, and then slowly reintroduce the content you want to use. Even if you're sure your mods and cc are fine, there's no shortcut for testing.
Now that you've established that the game works with no mods or cc, try creating a new Mods framework and adding back only your NRaas mods, nothing else. If the game still works, add a few more mods, and a few more, until you've added them all or found the ones that cause problems. Then you can do the same with your cc. The launcher not opening is more likely a cc problem—mods don't get loaded until the game launches.
As for Steam vs. the EA App, if you own Sims 3 in Steam, I'd use that. It removes the EA App as a possible source of problems, and you can in fact launch Sims 3 through TS3W.exe (or Sims3LauncherW.exe for the launcher) without even opening Steam if you want. This doesn't work in the EA App just as it didn't work in Origin after 2015.
The caveat is that you'd need to own all the packs you want to use in Steam itself; Steam won't recognize anything you only own through the EA App. And you'd need to redownload and reinstall your Store content as well. The way the Store encryption works, items cannot be shared between Steam and EA App installs.
Ok so this happened before as well but I was able to launch the game just 1 time with my mods and cc through EA apps ( I don't have all my games through steam, but asked because I was curious).
Now I went to relaunch the game and it's back to not opening at all. If I go to task manager it appears there but never actually loads.
Also I have been trying the TS3W method all week and it hasn't worked. I used to use this way back in the day no problem but it straight up doesn't work now.
Totally stumped.
@divaisdancing Try uninstalling McAfee, as described here:
https://www.mcafee.com/support/?articleId=TS101331&page=shell&shell=article-view
Whether it helps or not, you can reinstall it after testing (at least twice—if the game launches, restart the computer and test again). If it makes no difference, we'll know that's not the issue. But McAfee definitely objects to the EA App and games run through it at least some of the time, so it's worth testing.
And again, you can't launch Sims 3 directly through its .exe in an EA App install. The game won't open unless the App is also open. Furthermore, an EA App install uses TS3.exe, without the W; TS3W.exe does nothing and could be deleted without any ill effects. And trying to launch from TS3.exe with the App already open will only bring up the launcher, as that's what the .exe is coded to do.
The reason the TS3W.exe method worked "back in the day" is that only patch 1.69 uses TS3.exe. If you previously had a disc install, or even an Origin install before the patch 1.69 update in 2015, you would have been unaffected.
Unfortunately the EA app proved to not work despite every solution offered. I ultimately had to spend 200$ re-buying the packs on steam and am currently using with minimal issues.
I appreciate the assistance nonetheless. It's just disgusting that they forced us to use this program that doesn't work and I had no choice to basically rebuy this costly purchase.
@divaisdancing I'm sorry to hear that. I wasn't out of ideas yet, but if you don't want to deal with this problem anymore, that's understandable. And the fact that the Steam version works suggests the issue was probably on your EA account, but there are still other possibilities, for example borked permissions on the folder Sims 3 was installed into, where installing in a different location might have helped.
Regardless, I hope the game is now stable for you, and the Steam version is definitely more convenient than the EA one.
