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itsemilylol182's avatar
itsemilylol182
Newcomer
8 hours ago

Sims 3 on disc only a white screen

I recently bought a second-hand physical copy of the Sims 3 for my laptop. The disc read fine at first and downloaded the start up, but every time I open it the welcome page is simply a white box. The other options (downloads, uploads etc) appear, just not the Welcome tab. Pressing the play icon shuts the page down instead of starting the game. Accessing autorun within the folder also does not load anything.

I am operating on the most recent update of Windows 11 Home 64-bit. So far I have tried:

-Clearing Microsoft Edge history and allowing Internet Explorer to run

-Uninstalling and reinstalling both xbit86 and .NET 35 

-Reinstalling DirectX9

-Removing the Sims 3 from the EA folder and onto desktop

If I disconnect my laptop from the internet, the offline screen loads on the launcher, but still the game does not load when I click the play button. My laptop is only a year old - it has a Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 7 155H (22 CPUs), ~3.8GHz processor, so if that's the issue I'll have to give it up as a bad job - and has ample storage. I have no trouble running other games, but those have been downloaded from apps like Steam rather than disc. I am using an external drive to read the disc, but I assumed it was not the issue since the download worked fine. 

Nothing is working. I am also quite stupid so if there remains a very obvious solution then please explain it to me, thank you!

crashing
technical issues

1 Reply

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    5 hours ago

    itsemilylol182​  I believe your processor needs one of the Alder Lake workarounds in order to run Sims 3 properly.  (I say I believe because I don't think I've heard from anyone else with this exact model.)  The EA App version of the game has been patched, but you can't run that if you can't register your copy of the game; the Steam version wasn't updated, and of course the disc version has not been either.

    Before doing anything else though, please manually update your game to 1.67, the highest patch level available for disc installs.  Use the Super Patch, which you can find here:

    http://akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/sims/sims3/patches/TS3_1.67.2.0240xx_update.exe

    Your browser might block it because it starts with http rather than https, but you can see from the URL that it points directly to EA servers; it's just a very old upload.  Point it at TS3W.exe, in [install location]\The Sims 3\Game\Bin.

    Once you've done that, use the Alder Lake patch or one of the other workarounds.  All are summarized in the accepted solution of this master thread:

    Sims 3 won't open: Alder Lake (Intel 12th-gen) CPU | EA Forums - 8265525

    If you still can't play, please provide a dxdiag.  Click Windows key-R, enter dxdiag in the run box, wait for the scan to finish, click "Save all information," and save the file to your desktop.  From there, you can attach it to a reply using the paper clip (Attachment) icon included with the other formatting buttons.

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