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Re: 🛠️ Creating a symlink in macOS to store the Sims 4 folder on an external drive

Hi!

I am having issues launching Sims 4 on my MacBook Pro, M1. I have Sims 4 stored on an external hard drive with a symlink, everything was working fine until 5th May. Suddenly, the game will not open at all. I keep receiving error codes, and no Sims 4 window pops up. When I review the Activity Monitor on my laptop, it says Sims 4 is not responding upon launch. I have done the following:-

Tried to launch without mods
Tried to launch without current saves
Tried to launch without trays
Cleared cache for the EA App and game
Used first aid on my external hard drive
I tried to repair the game, and update the game, but I am unable to as the EA App keeps me on a continuous loop with an eventual "something went wrong" error message
I tried to uninstall and redownload the game, but I am now unable to download it to my external drive ("something went wrong" error message once it reaches around 95% download).

Can anyone advise?

1 Reply

Bluebellflora
Hero+
3 days ago
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Without knowing what the error message said it's difficult to help. The first thing to try would have been simply renaming the TS4 folder as described here - [INSTRUCTIONS] How to troubleshoot and test a broken game | EA Forums - 11864548 as this would ascertain whether it was a symlink issue, a user data issue, or a game installation issue. But now your game is uninstalled there's no way of knowing.

Follow these steps to completely wipe all traces of EA App from your Mac - https://bluebellflora.com/2024/04/04/ea-app-recovery-for-mac-reset-ea-app-by-clearing-cache-and-other-files-manually/

Then download a free app called AJA lite from the Mac App Store and test your hard drive speeds. I know you had the game installed on the drive previously but users have reported the same download issue as you on slow drives. Post a pic of the results here if you'd like me to see the read/write speeds.

Re-download EA App, disable automatic updates and downloads, change the installation location to your external drive and only attempt to download the base game. If you get any OS messages asking for permission to allow EA App/The Sims 4 access to removable volumes, the Documents folder, or any other locations go ahead and allow.

If the base game successfully installs trash the symlink EA folder in your Documents folder, provided you are happy your actual user data is in the EA folder on your external drive. Launch the game and a new EA folder should appear in Documents.

Let me know how you get on with that 🙂