SIMS 3 Pets expansion

Hi all,

As much as it pains me to have to use Origin my kids love SIMs 3 and have it on both their laptops. We've encountered a problem after downloading and installing the Pets expansion pack. Here's a breakdown of how the issue developed....

1) The SIMS 3 base game ran fine, no problems whatsoever starting up and connecting to Origin..

2) Bought the Pets expansion pack ( the only DLC installed beyond the base game ) - downloaded and installed no problem.

3) SIMS 3 and Pets show up in the game library.

4) SIMS 3 updated to 1.67

5) Click on Pets to play - SIMS 3 launcher starts up. Click blue play button, launcher closes, sends us back to the library page. Nothing happens...

6) Click the SIMS 3 game, launcher starts up. Error mesage saying 'cannot connect to origin' appears. Thrown back to library again.

7) That's it. Nothing else happens. The game worked fine up until the Pets DLC was installed - now not even the base game will start.

I've spent several long hours with EA customer support chat who couldn't work it out and just posted me a list of generic advice which was clearly his crib sheet to work from - "Ask the customer if they have updated DirectX...." . The guy suggested I reinstalled windows and then said he unerstood how frustrating it must be and if he were in my position he'd be upset too! So thanks for the pity vote EA, but I really don't think I need to reinstall my entire OS because the Pets expansion isn't working.

Does anyone have any ideas? Like I said above the whole set up worked perfectly fine up until the Pets was installed - there's no firewall or antivirus issues ect. Now it just doesn't want to know. Plus this happened on two different laptops, and at £20 a time I'm even less than impressed with EA than I was to start with. I'd be extremely grateful for any help with this one.