The Sims 3 crashes to desktop without error message

@tommyiliev  You've been very thorough, but I do have a few more questions.  First, in a given save, does the crash happen at the same time no matter what?  For example, you save at 9 am on day 12, it crashes at 2 pm on day 12, and if you reload to 9 am, it still crashes at 2 pm that same day no matter what you do?  Can you avoid this by running an NRaas MasterController town reset (City Hall > NRaas > MC > Town Options > Reset Everything)?  Does ErrorTrap throw any errors just before the crash?  You might not see them on-screen, but there would be scripterrors in your Sims 3 user folder.

I'd also like to know whether there's any pattern to the weather at the time of the crashes.  Even if you don't get to winter, maybe it's fall and there's a frost, or it's raining.

The Sims 3 crashes in your dxdiag point to a component of the Intel graphics driver, specifically dxilconv.dll, which his involved in converting DirectX 9 commands to (I think) DX12.  This is a workaround on Intel's part to avoid having to properly support DX9 games.  We've been seeing this a lot recently in Sims 4, and the fix is to force the game to run in DX11 mode, but that's not an option for Sims 3.

Point is, there may or may not be a good workaround for this, depending on how much effort you're willing to put in.  One option is to use the player-made DXVK (DirectX to Vulkan) tool for Sims 3, which should get around the issue, and also possibly make your game run better overall.  I haven't tried it myself, so I can only go by what other users say, but at worst, it won't help and you can remove it again.  Another option is to try the newest Intel driver for your processor and graphics chip, but you'll have to jump through some hoops to force it to install because HP generally blocks drivers not provided directly by HP; and there's no guarantee this driver will do any better.

Anyway, please provide the info requested above, and let me know what direction you'd like to go if the dxilconv.dll crash can't be resolved with in-game troubleshooting.  I would also highly recommend keeping ErrorTrap and Overwatch in place, and adding MasterController, bofh for now and once your game is stable again.

P.S.  I'm a native English speaker, and I wouldn't have known you're not if you hadn't said so.

Hi, thank you for your reply! I've been reading some of your solutions here looking for a fix. I'm now intrigued if the issue can be at all resolved and am willing to put some more effort.

Well, each save seems to crash at it's own in-game time. My first one in a custom Riverview crashes at exactly 11:33PM on a Week 2 Wednesday with clear weather, doesn't matter if I saved it at 9:03AM on a Week 2 Monday or 10:30PM on the same Wednesday. Another one of my tests in Bridgeport crashed at 6:02AM on a Week 2 Monday with foggy weather. The Isla Paradiso (I've read that it's the heaviest and buggiest EA world) test crashed at 4PM on a Week 2 Tuesday. I haven't been able to notice any pattern prior to the crashes other than that my game completely avoids Spooky Day ☹️ ErrorTrap doesn't always show an in-game notification for errors before crashing, and when it does it's a different one each time, however I did get a couple of ScriptError files in my user folder. I have no idea how to read them though.

As soon as I got your reply, I went and downloaded MasterController to try it and reset the towns, but the game crashed again while I was testing in my custom Riverview save file and a brand new Bridgeport save. Seems that the issue can't be fixed in-game via NRaas' mods.

I've read about the DirectX to Vulkan tool some time ago, but didn't look deeper into it as I got busy and eventually forgot, but now you reminded me of it! It seems to me that it just might be the right fix needed for this issue, as forcing Intel to run on the newest driver might need to be done regularly. Do you know where I can find reliable info regarding the DXVK tool? Do you think it's safe and getting this tool won't affect my other games, which are running great?

@tommyiliev  These crashes sound like what happens when a sim has a corrupt outfit, more often than not a corrupt work outfit.  This would likely be an inactive sim being pushed to go to work, spinning into this outfit, and therefore triggering the crash.  This isn't definitive, but an easy test would be to remove all sims from any career with a shift that starts 30-60 minutes after the crash.  For example, the Bridgeport crash at 6:02 am could be due to a military sim who starts work at 7.

You can use MasterController to force sims to quit; you may need the Cheats add on.  From City Hall, select NRaas > MC > Sim > Intermediate > Career > Quit, filter by career and then the category, and just force them all to quit.  You don't need to save your progress, of course.

The useful thing about this test is that it checks for bad outfits and also for problems with the lot that hosts the rabbithole for the career.  So if it helps, you could try reseting the lot, or placing a new copy elsewhere (first, so sims don't lose their careers) and bulldozing the original.

If this doesn't help, there are other places to look as well, but it's a good place to start.

Isla Paradiso is definitely the buggiest world, to the point that crashing there isn't indicative of anything.  I'd put it aside for now and test elsewhere.  Bridgeport also has its issues, mostly due to sims getting stuck in elevators (Overwatch helps but doesn't entirely remove the problem), and resident sims materializing inside NPC areas and being unable to get out.  The quick and dirty test is to remove all high-rises, other than perhaps one your own sims live in, and place the households elsewhere.  This kind of defeats the purpose of Bridgeport, but it's a useful test, and you can use "save as" to leave your original save intact.

I have no idea how your custom Riverview is put together, but if you want to be thorough, I'd suggest testing elsewhere for now and going back to it when the game is stable overall.

The point about the Intel graphics driver is not that you'd constantly have to update, rather that we'd see if the current driver gets around the dxilconv.dll error.  If it does, you could keep that version indefinitely.  If not, you'd want to keep testing newer drivers as they're released.

As far as DXVK goes, this is a good tutorial, written by a user who's been active and helpful elsewhere:

https://nornities.tumblr.com/post/751283334185959424/how-to-use-dxvk-with-the-sims-3

As said, I can't promise you it will work, or even that it won't brick your Sims 3 install, but that is all it could do.  At most, you might need to reinstall the game.  Your saves and other user data should be entirely unaffected.

Thank you very much! These suggestions seem like a good place to start. I'm not entirely sure about the career outfits though - even if troubleshooting points to a corrupt outfit, I wouldn't know who's wearing it or how to fix it. I have also tested a world with empty lots, without any CC, mods, townies or rabbit holes and I suppose anything corrupt regarding a career would've showed, yet it still crashed.

I'm going to try out your suggestions over the next few days and I'll come back here to update this thread once I have any results. I'll start with the MasterController add-on just to make sure if the outfits and rabbit holes have any issues.

Thank you again and I'll keep you posted!

@tommyiliev  The idea with a corrupt career outfit is that you first identify the career it's tied to, then remove the relevant sims from that career one by one until the game stops crashing.  If you test on a spare copy of your save, you can revert back once you've figured it out and change only that one outfit.

Having said that, I'm not at all convinced this is the problem.  It was just the place I'd start looking given that the crashes happen at predictable times that are also not tied to any other obvious in-game function (e.g. 5 am when plants grow or midnight when a bunch of other calculations happen).  The fact that an empty save is affected suggests the problem is fundamentally elsewhere even if it might have predictable triggers.

Let me know what you find, and particularly how DXVK works out if you end up trying it.

Well in my free time over the past few days I've been trying to get the game running and to my surprise the issue has actually deepened instead of resolved!

First off, I tried the MasterController add-on like you said and made all townies quit careers, but my main custom Riverview save still crashed at 11:33PM. Then I decided to go straight for DXVK, followed all the steps from the Tumblr post, but I still couldn't get the game to recognize it and create it's cache. I also tried running The Sims 3 simply as administrator; reinstalling and then running it in Windows 7 compatibility mode - yet it still crashed. Lastly, I tried downloading it from Steam, as it installs the 1.67 patch and tried everything in this thread with it - still crashed.

I recently tried to transfer to The Sims 4 and it crashed as well! In the 4's crash log I find the line <buildsignature>Local.Unknown.Unknown.1.110.311.1020-1.300.000.196.Release.DX9</buildsignature> - so you must be right, there's an issue between my DX12, the games' DX9 and the PC's graphics driver/card.

I was able to find someone's forum post on Nraas' website with the exact same issue as me, even down to the same PC model series - https://www.nraas.net/community/chatterbox/topic12921 - and I'm coming to the conclusion that they have an Intel graphics card as well.

In the meantime, I have reported the issue to Intel support and sent them a diagnostic report. For now I'll just wait for an answer from Intel before I do anything else and see if it helps me decide how to proceed.

Perhaps for the Sims 3 I could try the Alder Lake patch from LazyDuchess - although it says that it's a solution for when the game refuses to load at all, whereas I'm able to fully play for days. One last solution I'm thinking of is if running the game on an external graphics card could help. But I don't have any experience with computer components and have only read that it's not impossible to install an external graphics card on a laptop...

@tommyiliev  Sims 4's issue can be worked around by forcing the game to run in DirectX 11 mode.  If you want to try, open the EA App game library, click Sims 4 > Manage > View properties, and add -dx11 to the command line box.

I'm not convinced that the user on the NRaas site has exactly the same issue as you.  The call stack does reference dxilconv.dll, but that's not a problem in and of itself.  This resource is a part of the Intel graphics driver, and the call stack simply shows that it was in use at the time, which is to be expected.  I'm not saying you're wrong, only that there isn't enough information to be sure either way.

The Alder Lake patch is definitely not going to help.  All it does is limit the game to using one CPU core for about five seconds to get around a DRM issue that affects some Alder Lake and newer processors.  It has no effect at all after this initial time frame.

I can't really help with DXVK, but you could try joining the Lazy Duchess Discord.  A few players there use DXVK for Sims 3, in fact that's where I first heard of it.  So you might find someone who could walk you through troubleshooting.

As far as an external GPU goes, it could be an expensive prospect.  Quality enclosures can cost $200-300; although I do see cheaper ones on Amazon, I have no idea how well they work.  The graphics card itself could be cheap if you find a used one, but no external GPU setup gets the full power of the graphics card, so you'd probably want to go one tier higher than whatever card you'd otherwise like to use for Sims 3.  To be honest, you'd be better off buying a gaming laptop for not much more money (or less if you buy it used on Ebay or the like), and skipping dealing with the whole setup and the other issues you're seeing.

@tommyiliev  I'm glad to hear the new driver helped, not only for you but for any other players with the same issue.  I did mention trying to force-install the newest driver, as is usually required with HP laptops; it's a bit surprising that you could install a newer one without jumping through any hoops.  As for why you thought the driver was already up-to-date, perhaps you last checked before this one was made available.