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tayllah's avatar
tayllah
6 years ago

Re: [Info] The Sims 4 macOS Catalina Troubleshooting

Here is the advice from this thread from a few years ago. Hope this helps!

- Close the game (and anything else that's open // save whatever was open)

- Log out of your Mac profile (press the Apple in the top left corner and go down to log out)

- Create a new profile (Don't worry you won't need to keep it, it's just for the brand spanking new settings and files)

- Go into your new Mac profile

- In your files section locate the folder (Electronic Arts) containing the sims 4 game.

- Copy that folder and all of its contents onto a USB

- Log out of your newly created Mac profile

- Log onto the one you usually use (the one you use to play the sims 4)

- Locate your Electronic Arts folder and delete it***
((***If you have specific mods you want go into your Mods folder and place the ones you want onto your USB))

- Now take the mint (untouched) Electronic Arts folder and copy and paste it where the old one was.

You should now be able to play the game :D

((***for the mods make sure the game works first and then log out and add your mods to the new mod folder))

15 Replies

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  • megan_skeens's avatar
    megan_skeens
    6 years ago

    Hi there,

    Thanks for the information. Unfortunately, I don't have a USB, so I am going to have to go out and buy one. 

    After I posted my issue last night, I did find a solution to get my game to launch. This is what I did: 

    "What I found is that my Sims folder has a "UserData.lock" file in it that, for some reason, causes this problem. To get passed it on my machine I deleted the lock file from "~/Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/".

    Try using Finder to go to your Documents -> Electronic Arts -> The Sims 4 folder and rename/delete/move UserData.log, then try relaunching. If you prefer the command line then open Terminal and try:

    rm -rf "~/Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/UserData.lock"

    Then try to launch the game again."

    So, I've been able to launch the game now, but it's running incredibly slow, freezes, and shuts down. I changed some settings in-game to have graphics on the lowest setting, but that hasn't helped much. 

    Sigh.

  • ToKiHyou's avatar
    ToKiHyou
    New Adventurer
    6 years ago

    Hi Megan đŸ™‚

    Apologies, but I very thankfully followed your instructions and even though the game starts again, it doesn't see my saved files. Any ideas for this?

    I can still see my saves in the EA Sims 4 folder, but every time I remove the .lock file it the game start afresh â˜šī¸

    Thank you in advance

    Toki

  • UtdMaria's avatar
    UtdMaria
    6 years ago

    The same thing happened to me... the game opens but my Save Files in it are gone (but they're still in the saves folder in my documents)... I don't know what to do and I'm highkey panicking ughhh.

  • yam655's avatar
    yam655
    6 years ago
    @ToKiHyou I renamed my Documents/"Electronic Arts"/"The Sims 4" folder to "The Sims 4-safe" so that the game would regenerate the folder. This let me explore solutions to my problem knowing my saved files (and mods/CC) were safe without any worries that something I was using was making it worse.

    I made one test save file there, then I saved and exited the game. I then copied my safe saved games (copied, so I could check them without worrying about whether lack of CC messed them up) from "The Sims 4-safe"/saves/* to the new "The Sims 4"/saves directory. Since the saved game I'd created to test things was a throw-away thing, I could overwrite anything with conflicting names.

    Once a new saved game has been made, The Sims 4 will pick up changes to the directory, so it then saw all my saved files.

    However, even in CAS with a single Sim and a totally fresh Documents/"Electronic Arts"/"The Sims 4" folder, I saw the game hang after maybe 5 minutes. (This was after running "Repair" from within Origin to make sure none of the game files got messed up somehow after the upgrade.)

    So, the failure to start up after the upgrade was an issue, but not the only issue. It looks like it is currently unplayable unstable.
  • yam655's avatar
    yam655
    6 years ago
    Apparently "Repair" doesn't work properly in macOS. (If it did, you wouldn't need to uninstall and reinstall.)

    I again moved my "The Sims 4" folder to another location, preserving the mods, saves, and tray information. I wanted it all to be as fresh as the new installation.

    But this time I uninstalled The Sims 4 and reinstalled it.

    I'm going to let the game play by itself for a few hours before I invest in playing it for real, but it seems it's run longer than 5 minutes already without crashing, so here's hoping...

    Requiring a reinstall after an OS upgrade is still broken, even if there's a work-around.
  • yam655's avatar
    yam655
    6 years ago
    ... and after a full reinstall, still using the brand new "The Sims 4" folder without any mods, tray content, or previous save files... it halted on me the same way after less than an hour.

    It's unstable after the 10.15 update. I would call it unplayably unstable, as you never want to lose an hour or more of your game play.
  • PigeonsRgreaT's avatar
    PigeonsRgreaT
    6 years ago
    @ToKiHyou I am having the same issue and it also says that my video card is missing which is incorrect. I don't know how to help but I am just saying sharing this annoying experience.
  • charloune291294's avatar
    charloune291294
    6 years ago

    Hi! I moved the UserData.lock file and the game finally starts, however I lost all content and families in the game. If I move it back to the folder, the game does start anymore. Any advice to find my game as before or have I lost everything? Thanks!

  • LouWriGew's avatar
    LouWriGew
    6 years ago

    The same thing happened to me too!! I decided to create another family and build another house once I finally managed to get TS4 to work but then it wouldn't save my family/house. And opens the main menu as if brand new again!! 

  • Menuha's avatar
    Menuha
    6 years ago

    I deleted the folder and now the game starts but it wont save my games

  • jkeef95's avatar
    jkeef95
    5 years ago

    This did NOT help me at all. I apparently have to keep the new profile. Which sucks to change to that one just to play the game. 

  • neslisahozl's avatar
    neslisahozl
    4 years ago
    @Menuha hi, i have the same problem as you. i did this delete userdata.lock file thing after the sims is already running error, now i cannot save any of my games. did you solve that and if so, how? hope you see this...

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