The Game won't launch

LiaKnow  If you haven't already, please try forcing the game to open in windowed mode.  Open Options.ini, in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3, search for fullscreen , and set it to 0 (zero).

If that doesn't help, please try playing in a clean user folder.  Move the entire Sims 3 folder out of Documents > Electronic Arts and onto your desktop.  When you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  (Your saves and other content will be intact in the folder you've moved but temporarily unread by the game.)  Don't add anything to the new folder yet; just start a new save and see how it runs, that is if you can get that far.

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.

I honestly hope this tells someone something because I have been trying to solve this for 3 days now and I am so close to just giving up and repurchasing everything on steam to see if that works 

LiaKnow  It looks from your dxdiag like Sims 3 is using the Intel integrated graphics chip, which it shouldn't be doing, rather than the Nvidia graphics card.  Are you trying to play with the laptop running on battery?  If so, please plug it in instead.

If that alone doesn't help, right-click your desktop, select the Nvidia Control Panel, click Manage 3D Settings > Program settings, find TS3.exe on the list, and choose the high-performance Nvidia graphics option.  If that doesn't help either, open Windows Settings > System > Display > Graphics settings, find TS3.exe on the list (click Browse if you don't see it), and choose the high-performance option there.

puzzlezaddictI tried all of your suggestions and it unfortunatly still doesn't work, I used The Sims 3 Crash Log Analyser and it's telling me that the likley cause is "Unknown (ACCESS_VIOLATION reading adress *a bunch of numbers/letters*)" and I have no idea what that means. I changed all the permissions on d3d9.dll in system32 hoping that would help but it was in vain.

LiaKnow  Is the game currently trying to use Intel or Nvidia graphics?  If the game is running long enough to update DeviceConfig.log, the file will list the GPU about 30 lines down.  It's in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3, and you can check the modified date to see whether it matches the last time you tried to open the game.  You don't need to provide the file; just let me know whether its date is current and which GPU it lists.

Please also look for new errors in the Reliability Monitor.  Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes, and you'll see a chart of errors and updates with a column for each day.  Today is on the right.

Look for an error that happened at exactly the time of your most recent attempt to play Sims 3.  If you find one, double-click it to see more details, then copy that info and paste it into a reply here.  If you don't see a new error, check back in an hour or so—the Reliability Monitor doesn't always update right away.

An access violation is by itself too generic of an error to be much help in troubleshooting.  Often the faulting module is informative, but when that's the game itself, all the error is saying is "this app crashed because it tried to access memory in a way that Windows does not permit," which can mean almost anything in practical terms.  The "reading address" is the memory address involved in the violation, but that would only be useful in a live debugging situation where the person troubleshooting could see what data was assigned to that address at that moment.

puzzlezaddict  The date in DeviceConfig.log is current but the CPU is still listed as Intel even though I changed to Nvidia

This error report is in Swedish so if you need anything translated I can do that

Beskrivning
Felaktig programsökväg:    C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3.exe

Problemsignatur
Händelsenamn:    APPCRASH
Programnamn:    TS3.exe
Programversion:    1.0.0.18
Programtidsstämpel:    6707155c
Namn på felmodul:    igd12um32xel.dll
Modulens version:    31.0.101.4146
Tidsstämpel för felmodul:    63f721a4
Undantagskod:    c0000005
Undantagsförskjutning:    0002448f
OS-version:    10.0.26100.2.0.0.768.101
Språkvariant-ID:    1053
Ytterligare information 1:    5c0c
Ytterligare information 2:    5c0c23d75afb1c4e336215c5d9c2d9b0
Ytterligare information 3:    27a5
Ytterligare information 4:    27a5927c27ef7338ff14001fce27de44

Extra information om problemet
Bucket-ID:    b6e098c90122e351079db6f5907ba961 (1701717400023181665)

LiaKnow  This is another crash of the Intel graphics driver (igd12um32xel.dll is a component of the driver), but that's not a surprise given the game is still using the iGPU.  So the question is how do we force it to use the Nvidia card instead?  Have you changed both the Nvidia Control Panel settings and the setting under System > Display > Graphics, as I listed a couple posts ago?  And did you specifically change both settings for TS3.exe, without the W?  That's the game's executable in an EA App install.

If you've done this, and you're playing with the laptop plugged in, try selecting the same settings for Sims3Launcher.exe as well, the launcher's executable.

If that doesn't help either, open the Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Global settings, and select the Nvidia GPU there.  This is just a test; you wouldn't want to keep the setting for general use.  But as a test, it's very useful.

You can always check DeviceConfig to see which GPU the game used the last time it opened.  Keep in mind the file won't update until you launch the game again.

puzzlezaddictI have done all of that and the gpu is now listen as Nvidia in the DeviceConfig, last night I uninstalled and reintalled the game and the it played but when I tried playing today it once again only gives me a black screen before crashing. I don't have any mods or cc in, I even took out the saves yet it still crashes, I'm starting to think the only thing that I can do now is to reinstall widows and see if that works 

LiaKnow  If you want to reinstall Windows, that's fine, but before doing so, I'd try a new Sims 3 user folder, as in, move the existing one out of Documents > Electronic Arts to let the game generate a new one.  If that alone doesn't help, force windowed mode again, now that the Nvidia GPU is running the show.

puzzlezaddictUnfortunately neither of those worked either. I'm feeling bad over taking so much of your time but I genuinely don't know what to do anymore. I feel like I've searched everywhere for a solution but no one else seems to have this exact issue and I'm so exhausted at this point