I'm so tired of the popups during loading crashing my game.

I'd been away from The Sims (and my whole PC) for 5 months trying to decide if I wanted the expense of a new one or to try a rebuilt GPU...finally bought new. So back into TS4 and dang, having the same issues I had 6+ months ago, and it really peeves me to no end.

When the game loads, EA has started putting "pop-ups"? prior to the actual load game page. Ads for new packs, ads for sales...that stuff. I "X" out of them but especially if there's more than 1, when I get to my load screen, it's greyed out and there's nothing I can do. Literally. Can't exit, can't load. "WIN" to get back to desktop but it won't close out using the "Close Window" function. I end up having to Alt-Ctrl-Del to bring up Task Manager and can finally exit out (after many tries). I do know that now it will load because it got that cr***y nonsense out of the way, but why does EA do this? Does no one there actually play the game? The ads, the sales info...all on the EA Home Page, so why are they forcing this error and wasting our time.  Luckily this new PC is faster (although the previous one did a pretty good job, too) so I don't have to wait long, even with more CC than I will ever admit too, yet it takes more time to close up the game than it does to load it.

Anyone else having this issue? Didn't feel it was a "gameplay" problem and not sure if "Technical" would be the place to post, but mostly just wondering if others are having to deal with it, esp since I've dealt with it on 2 separate computers over months and months, and if they have come up with any solution!

Thx :)