Sims 3 won't launch, core/activation.dll not found

hey y'all! so i switched computers from a current, fully updated one to one that only runs windows 10 at the most. when i downloaded origin and reinstalled sims 4 to this one it worked fine and has been playing well for months. i installed sim 3 on this computer but when i try to open the launcher nothing comes up. when i try to open it from origin, the origin page comes back up a few seconds later like it would if i had just exited the game. i tried going into files and opening it from there but then it tells me my Core/Activation.dll isn't there. "the code execution cannot proceed because core/activation.dll was not found" is what shows up. i tried reinstalling it, setting all sims 3 applications i could find as admin, and origin, and set sims 3 to run with windows 10 or 7, but nothing is working ☹️ any other possible fixes?