Forum Discussion

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
11 years ago
Solved

Can't open The Sims 3 on my Mac due to "unknown error."

Hello there. I'll try to give as clear and accurate a description of the problem I'm experiencing as I can. I've been enjoying playing with The Sims 3 for a couple of months now. I got it as a digit...
mac
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    11 years ago

    Joyful news. I didn't honestly expect it to work, but since I had nothing else I could try, I went through the whole uninstall-reinstall process again. The only difference is that before I started, I cleared out some duplicate files in my Documents and moved my saved games onto a USB stick, then deleted them from the computer. And this time, mysteriously enough, it finally worked.

    So! Thank you for your patience. Problem solved, for now!

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
11 years ago
@dovecam wrote:

Thanks for your reply. The tricky part is, it is literally just two or three seconds after I click the game's icon to open it that the "unknown error" message comes up. There isn't time to observe a decrease in free RAM and do a purge in Terminal. Can you think of any other possibility?

I tried opening the game while bypassing the Launcher just now, and had a moment of hope before another error message came up: 

Unable to start game

Service initialization failed (0x0175dcbb)

I Googled that but couldn't find any answers that made sense to me or that I hadn't already tried - or that I trusted, since the one that seemed to have "worked" was on a forum that recommended the use of cracks. Can you advise?

Hi

Ah, so there really isn't time to fix the RAM issue. Interesting. When you click the icon to open the game, do you see any evidence at all that it is trying to open? For example does a second icon appear in the dock or do you see anything appear in the list of active programmes in Activity Monitor?

Regarding the failure to bypass the launcher - have you had any success with this in the past? Now that I have thought about it a little more, my understanding is that you need an older copy of the game on disc to be able to do this. If you have a newer copy on disc, for example, something has been changed in the game code so that the launcher cannot be bypassed. I am not sure what the situation is with Origin downloads but it is likely that the digital versions require launcher use as well. So that may not work out and I may have been incorrect to suggest it. You can read more about bypassing the launcher (or not) here if you are interested: http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/03/tutorial-bypass-the-launcher.html

I think there must be something wrong with your new installation. It sounds as though you followed the correct procedures to remove all the files associated with the game when you uninstalled, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong with the new installation. Digital downloads through Origin are notorious for corrupt files. Perhpas that is the issue. Or maybe the game downloaded successfully but the patch failed. I know it is a nuisance but I would recommend trying again. I am going to paste ridiculously long instructions in the next post. Follow BluebellFlora's guide to uninstalling again - as well as getting rid of the game files, also delete the Origin client and download a fresh copy. Download a fresh copy of the manual superpatch as well. When using Origin to re-download the game, be sure to use the little "i" as described.

Let's try that and see if you have any luck. 

Fingers crossed for you!

Caspin

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
11 years ago

Still no luck. Here's what I did:

  1. Full, clean uninstall of all Sims and Origin-related files, as per BluebellFlora. Restarted computer.
  2. Ran Memory Clean, repaired disk permissions. 
  3. Downloaded and installed Origin client.
  4. Downloaded new copy of base game, using the little "i." This took several hours, because, well, New Zealand.
  5. Installed base game (by clicking the "Install" button in Origin).
  6. Downloaded manual superpatch, extracted it and ran it. It did its thing.
  7. Repaired disk permissions and ran Memory Clean again just to be on the safe side. Got it down to 12 and a half gigs free memory available.
  8. Tried to open The Sims 3, using the Play button in Origin. Plumbob appeared in dock, but didn't bounce, and a couple of seconds later, "unknown error occurred."
  9. Tried to open The Sims 3 from Launchpad. Exactly the same. Used "sudo purge" in Terminal and tried again. Exactly the same.
  10. Despair?
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    11 years ago

    Oh no, so frustrating! 😕mileysad:

    I didn't realise that download speeds were so bad in NZ. We are very lucky here. I mean, that might be the problem - something goes wrong during the download of one of the elements, but there's no really very much you can do about that and you've already tried several times.

    I'm at a loss to know what else you can do. Did you move to Yosemite recently? I wonder whether that is part of the issue.

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      11 years ago

      I moved to Yosemite several weeks ago, before the current problems developed. Ah well.

      I'm now playing the game on an older desktop that doesn't have whatever mystery problem this is - it's a bit slower, but it seems to be coping. 

      Thank you for trying to help. I'm afraid this may just be insoluble.

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      11 years ago

      Joyful news. I didn't honestly expect it to work, but since I had nothing else I could try, I went through the whole uninstall-reinstall process again. The only difference is that before I started, I cleared out some duplicate files in my Documents and moved my saved games onto a USB stick, then deleted them from the computer. And this time, mysteriously enough, it finally worked.

      So! Thank you for your patience. Problem solved, for now!

      • Anonymous's avatar
        Anonymous
        11 years ago
        @dovecam wrote:

        Joyful news. I didn't honestly expect it to work, but since I had nothing else I could try, I went through the whole uninstall-reinstall process again. The only difference is that before I started, I cleared out some duplicate files in my Documents and moved my saved games onto a USB stick, then deleted them from the computer. And this time, mysteriously enough, it finally worked.

        So! Thank you for your patience. Problem solved, for now!

        That is great news @dovecam - I guess any leftover files on the system, even saved games, might cause issues. This is useful to know. I hope you enjoy your game from now on!

        😕mileyvery-happy:

Featured Places

Recent Discussions