The Sims 3 Causing PC Shut Down

@cloudygreyskies  Do you have software from Lavasoft installed, maybe an adblocker?  All the errors in your dxdiag are related to a Lafasoft service, so it's a good idea to update or uninstall and reinstall it, or don't reinstall it if you're not using it anymore.

However, these errors are unlikely to be related to the computer shutdowns.  Those are usually caused by a hardware or critical software error, either a critical event that makes Windows initiate an emergency shutdown (the BlueScreen of Death), or a hardware component not working properly and taking the system down with it.  It's impossible to tell without more information though.

Please open a File Explorer window, click This PC, and search for *.dmp and then *.mdmp (an asterisk followed by the file extension).  I'd like to see at least two or three dump files, if they exist  So please upload any you find from the last few times you've played Sims 3 and your computer has shut down; you can look at the modified dates on the files to see when they were written.  Specifically, right-click on each one, select Copy, right-click on your desktop and select Paste, then zip them together, upload them to a free filesharing site (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), and link them here.

If you don't find any such files, let me know.  It could be that the shutdowns aren't creating any files, which is useful information.  But if you have a cleaner app that deletes temp files, please disable it for now—it's more important to get this info than to keep your hard drive clean.

 @puzzlezaddict  Yeah, sorry I could find ones for some of the most recent ones, but I linked the most recent ones that I could find.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rZ-ivl_Lh4q8jvjvIxUDrHvyQgWQQ1iN/view

 @puzzlezaddict  Yeah, I couldn't find the most recent ones so I linked the most recent ones I could find so, here you go.

@cloudygreyskies  Those files are too old to be useful, to be honest.  In case you're curious, they're both access violations by TS3.exe—the game or one of its components tried to execute at a memory address that didn't allow it, and Windows put a stop to it.  This isn't specific enough to troubleshoot without more information; the solution can be anything from repairing or reinstalling the game to not using some poorly-designed custom content item.

It's probably irrelevant though: the fact that there aren't any newer files likely means that Windows isn't causing the shutdowns, since it would usually write a crash dump first.  (Still, please disable any cleaner app you have running, and look for more dump files going forward.)  Since this makes a hardware issue much more likely, the next step is hardware monitoring.  Download hwinfo from here:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

You don't need to install anything if you don't want to; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you want.  (If you would like to install, be sure to click the green button, not the orange one.)  Restart your computer, and don't open any other apps.  Launch hwinfo, choose "sensors only," and click the icon that's a sheet of paper with a + sign to start logging.  Save the file to your desktop for easy access later.

Wait five minutes, then launch Sims 3 and play until you get a shutdown; the log will keep being written until that happens, and the data should be valid up to that point.  When you've restarted your computer, upload the log to a third-party free filehosting site and link it here.  Please leave it in .csv format, or if you use OneDrive to share, please compress it in .zip format instead.

In case things don't pan out, just a question: do you hear your computer kicking up into high gear when you go into CAS, like a whirring sound from a fan? If the answer is, "yes," then there's a possibility that maybe your system has begun overheating, perhaps due to a dying fan or too much dust clogging up the vents, etc.

The reason why I ask is that you don't mention your computer restarting. You say it just shuts off. This makes me suspect that for whatever reason, you might have an overheating issue. But we can never know for sure unless you run some kind of monitor that displays your PC's internal temperature. 

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@thesims1depot wrote:

This makes me suspect that for whatever reason, you might have an overheating issue. But we can never know for sure unless you run some kind of monitor that displays your PC's internal temperature. 

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The requested hwinfo log will show the temperatures of all internal components, as well as a long list of other stats.  That's the point of logging a play session.

@puzzlezaddict 

Hello there, 

Very sorry for the extremely late reply, anyways something you should know is that when i was playing it, I was in create a sim, which typically crashes a lot quicker than when I am building. While this issue also occurs while I'm building, it takes a much longer time to crash/ shut down, anyways here you go.

Link: https://app.box.com/s/y923fuq684rnk7aa6pswyexuc12nc99c

@cloudygreyskies  Don't worry about the late reply; it's not a problem at all.

I can't say with absolute certainty that this is the cause of the shutdowns, but your graphics card is overheating almost as soon as you start playing.  This is the measurement on the GPU thermal diode, which, while the hottest place on the card, shouldn't be this hot:

This is despite the card's fan running at full speed from about six minutes in through the rest of the log.  As a result, the card dials back performance dramatically, as seen by clock speed:

although it's still not enough to bring temperatures down.  That's the most concerning aspect: that even with performance massively throttled, GPU temperatures stay worryingly high.  And although like I said, I can't exactly prove that this is causing the shutdowns, it certainly could.

Please open up the case, clean the GPU fan, and spin it to make sure it's working properly.  The temps of the other components are fine, even good, it's just the graphics card.  By the way, hwinfo reported a constant chassis intrusion, so be careful to put everything back where it belongs and close the case properly when you're done.

As far as Sims 3 goes, Create a Sim is more demanding than Build/Buy or live play; the increased GPU resources mean more heat, and in your case, excessively high temperatures more quickly.  So I'm not surprised that the shutdowns would happen sooner when you're in CAS than anywhere else.

@puzzlezaddict 

Hello There, 

I did what you recommended.

I opened  up the case, cleaned the GPU fan, and spinned it to make sure it's working properly.

One of the things that I noticed is that after doing so, is that it helped the issue alot. The last times I played the game, I was mainly in CAS, and by cleaning, spinning and making sure the GPU fan worked, what it did was it caused the issue to occur much later, shutting down, allowing for me to play the game for a longer amount of time. 

I guess to sum up what I'm saying is that it helped the issue, but did not get rid of it completely.

@cloudygreyskies  It's possible that the card is still overheating, just not as quickly, and so the crashes happen later.  You can run another hwinfo log and upload it if you want, and I'll take a look to confirm.

It may be though that your card isn't capable of cooling itself properly anymore.  This might be fixable, if there's something mechanically wrong with the fan.  It would also probably help to take it apart and reapply thermal paste: given the age of the card, the original thermal paste is probably totally dried out by now and not nearly as effective as it was.  If this isn't something you're comfortable doing yourself, you could ask a friend, or call computer shops in your area and get an estimate.

Beyond that though, given the age of the card, it might not be worth investing a lot of money in fixing it.  Aside from applying thermal paste, you could help the card run better by lowering the graphics settings and manually limiting in-game framerates.  Those steps would lower the workload for the GPU, although how much that would help would depend on the settings you currently use and the fps you're already seeing—if you're playing on low and getting low framerates, there's not really any room for improvement.

If you'd like to see your in-game framerates, bring up the cheats console (crtl-shift-c) and enter "fps on" without quotes.  A number will appear in the upper right corner of yoru screen.  Normally you'd want to see 60 or close to it (the refresh rate of your monitor is 60 Hz), but you could manually limit it to 30 and still get what most people think is a playable experience.  Let me know what you're getting now, and what you get if you turn a couple of graphics options down to medium or low; be sure to change graphics settings at the Main Menu, and quit and relaunch before testing.

The other option, if you can't stop the crashing with the current graphics card, would be to buy another one.  There's not much point in spending a lot of money on a newer GPU, or even a never-used somewhat older high-end model, but you could certainly find relatively cheap options that should work well with your current system.  Even as old as your computer is, it might still run Sims 3 reasonably well for a couple more years, provided the other components are in reasonably good condition.  (And there's no reason to think they aren't.)  Let me know if you're interested in going this route, either now or once you've exhausted other options.