Game crashes when I try to load mods through an external hard drive.

Because of my laptop's limited space, I have the game itself downloaded on an external hard drive, and I have followed a tutorial to link my mods folder to the same external hard drive as well. I've made sure the main game folder and the mods folder are not combined at all.

In the past, I had the game downloaded through Steam, and this wasn't an issue for awhile, until the game started to crash even if I only had very few mods in the mods folder. After I deleted Sims 4 through Steam, I swapped to the EA app, and the issue still occurred.

I have gone through my mods and deleted anything that could be corrupted or out of date, I have redone the tutorial to link my mods folder multiple times, I've refreshed the cache to my game and even repaired it multiple times as well. I've done a full reset, and nothing works. All script mods have been updated or removed.

The game works fine when there are no mods installed, and the game still works if I don't have the mods folder linked to the external hard drive; mods do show up when the folder isn't linked.

Any help would be really appreciated, as I've been struggling with this for a few months now. Thank you.

puzzlezaddict
7 months ago
Lumi1133 That really is strange. Have you moved only the Mods folder to the external, or the entire Sims 4 user folder? I realize I didn't ask before. If you haven't already, it would be useful to try moving the entire user folder to the external.

If that doesn't or didn't help, try creating a new partition on the external and placing the user folder there. You can partition drives in Disk Management.

8 Replies

puzzlezaddict
Hero+
7 months ago
Lumi1133 What format does the external drive have? You can check by clicking Windows key-X and selecting Disk Utility.
Lumi1133
Rising Novice
7 months ago
puzzlezaddict I believe it's NTFS
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
7 months ago
Lumi1133 Please check though. If the drive is FAT32, that could explain the issue.

If the drive is in fact NTFS, please trigger the crash again, then look for new errors in the Reliability Monitor. Click 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 this Sims 4 crash. 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.
Lumi1133
Rising Novice
7 months ago
puzzlezaddict
Description
Faulting Application Path: D:\The Sims 4\Game\Bin\TS4_x64.exe
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: TS4_x64.exe
Application Version: 1.117.227.1030
Application Timestamp: 68912761
Fault Module Name: TS4_x64.exe
Fault Module Version: 1.117.227.1030
Fault Module Timestamp: 68912761
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000001306d0
OS Version: 10.0.26100.2.0.0.768.101
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 2e69
Additional Information 2: 2e6974b6f36fcd994c4b8a8fed30d889
Additional Information 3: 1924
Additional Information 4: 19246afac4fb631de08a9f070285493a
Here's what was there, and yes, the format is NTFS.
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
7 months ago
Lumi1133 That's unfortunately just an access violation, too generic to be of any use by itself. But it does raise a question: what is the path to the Mods folder you can't use? If it's D:\The Sims 4\Mods, that might be the issue. Create a new folder on D, called whatever you want (but not "The Sims 4" obviously), and put your user folder inside that. Make sure the game works and is reading that folder, then add a fresh copy of one mod or cc item and see whether it loads.

The idea is that if both the game and the user data are stored in D:\The Sims 4, that could cause a whole pile of issues, perhaps including this one.

If that doesn't help, or you already have your user data in a separate folder, delete the Mods folder and let the game generate a new one, then try a fresh download of one mod or cc item.
Lumi1133
Rising Novice
7 months ago
puzzlezaddict Okay, after deleting all mods, the game still doesn't open when the linked folders are there. The user folder is separate from the game, too.
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
7 months ago
Lumi1133 That really is strange. Have you moved only the Mods folder to the external, or the entire Sims 4 user folder? I realize I didn't ask before. If you haven't already, it would be useful to try moving the entire user folder to the external.

If that doesn't or didn't help, try creating a new partition on the external and placing the user folder there. You can partition drives in Disk Management.
Lumi1133
Rising Novice
7 months ago
puzzlezaddict I had the entire user folder on the external, and after creating a partition, the game now works!! Even with mods (notably after going through an deleting a lot of the bugged script ones), my game is now actually launching and functioning! Thank you so much for your help!!