Base game The Sims 4 Steam edition keeps crashing

@djf149  Some of the Sims 4 crashes in your dxdiag point to a component of the Nvidia graphics driver, so start there, with a clean uninstall and reinstall of the driver.  Please use Display Driver Uninstaller, as described here:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/02/clean-re-install-of-graphics-drivers-with-display-driver-uninstaller-ddu.html

In case Sims 4 is the only game affected and you're wondering why, it uses different resources than many newer games, and a problem with the graphics driver could show up only in certain contexts.

Please try to play at least twice more.  If you see more crashes, look for new errors in the Reliability Monitor.  Hit 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 each recent crash, only those that happen after you DDU and reinstall the graphics driver.  For any such entry you find, 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.

I've gone ahead and done DDU again even though I did it last night.

Did DDU,

fresh install of GPU drivers now.

I've also gone ahead and removed ALL Sims 4 and EA files and installations files from my drive so I could get as fresh as a start as I can.

I want to re note here that I am not running mods or CC or expansions here. Just the based Sims 4 game steam installation.

After all this, I did get a session in that lasted about 30 ish mins with no crash, but afterwards every session would go back to crashing 2-3 mins in.

I also want to throw in that I removed the game from my steam library and uninstalled and removed all files and save files and then attempted to install and play the EA installation of the base game as well. The result were while the game did not crash within 2-3 mins, it still happened within 15 mins.

The game does not crash while in CAS or main menu, only in the main mode of playing the game.

on top of doing everything up above, I also preformed  "DISM.exe/Online/Cleanup-image/Restorehealth"

This was the results of that:
"Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.22621.2792

Image Version: 10.0.22631.4751

[==========================100.0%==========================] The restore operation completed successfully.
The operation completed successfully."

followed by a "sfc/scannow"

This was the results of that:
"
Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them.
For online repairs, details are included in the CBS log file located at
windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For offline
repairs, details are included in the log file provided by the /OFFLOGFILE flag."

Here is a more recent DxDiag log file and the log of the most recent" game crash plus that CBS file as well

Here is the perfmon /rel as well. There was two that happen after every crash. One for Sims 4 and one for GameManagerService3.exe

"

Description
Faulting Application Path: D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\The Sims 4\Game\Bin\TS4_x64.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: TS4_x64.exe
Application Version: 1.112.481.1030
Application Timestamp: 675a30ff
Fault Module Name: TS4_x64.exe
Fault Module Version: 1.112.481.1030
Fault Module Timestamp: 675a30ff
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000000001291863
OS Version: 10.0.22631.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0d3b
Additional Information 2: 0d3b6562761fba5d899eaa0547a29405
Additional Information 3: fcaf
Additional Information 4: fcafad12fe810cd1414b755a96352d20

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 85666b9a697d9ca022fb4de261573d2d (1367772546528132397)

"

"

Description
Faulting application name: GameManagerService3.exe, version: 3.5.0.370, time stamp: 0x622f7973
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.22621.4751, time stamp: 0x53a79838
Exception code: 0xe0434352
Fault offset: 0x0014b4c2
Faulting process id: 0x0x1054
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB69E0FCE419E1
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Razer\Razer Services\GMS3\GameManagerService3.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 007dd352-5095-4af9-be7c-960c09a0a3e0
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

"

@djf149  Defnitely uninstall Game Manager Service, since it's crashing and Razer software is known to occasionally conflict with Sims 4.  If that doesn't help, uninstall any other Razer apps you have.

If you get yet another crash, please try playing in a clean boot:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

The one service to leave enabled is the EABackgroundService, which the EA App needs in order to run.  Disable the rest as described.

When you reboot your computer, go through the Task Manager's background processes list shutting down any service that doesn't absolutely need to be running, for example anything from MSI Afterburner to RGB software might still be enabled.  If you accidentally kill a critical process and it doesn't restart on its own, just reboot your computer again.

Don't open anything other than Sims 4 and the EA App while testing, not even a browser window.

The idea is of course not to leave everything disabled indefinitely, rather to find the conflicting software and deal with that, either by leaving it disabled when you're not using it, removing it entirely, or reinstalling and hoping it works better this time.

I just did this a hand full of times to make sure there were not any processes taking place I had missed in task manager, but I am still experiencing crashes.

Here is the perfmon /rel message

Source
The Sims™ 4

Summary
Stopped working

Date
‎1/‎18/‎2025 11:35 PM

Status
Report sent

Description
Faulting Application Path: D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\The Sims 4\Game\Bin\TS4_x64.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: TS4_x64.exe
Application Version: 1.112.481.1030
Application Timestamp: 675a30ff
Fault Module Name: nvwgf2umx.dll
Fault Module Version: 32.0.15.6636
Fault Module Timestamp: 674f613e
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000003127da
OS Version: 10.0.22631.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 7188
Additional Information 2: 71882e9a841d7ef2fed7de72792eaec6
Additional Information 3: 147c
Additional Information 4: 147cd6446c44d67499a4ed351aac969d

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 199c069fc5e756701a0f440cdc4aa579 (1877794391662962041)

And the Dxiag for the most recent crash.

@djf149  This crash lists a component of the Nvidia graphics driver (nvwgf2umx.dll) as the faulting module, but DDU should have taken care of any driver-related issues.  Have you overclocked your GPU, either manually or with the tool built into GeForce Experience?  If so, please revert to stock settings and test again.  If that doesn't help, and you've overclocked your CPU, revert that as well.

If that doesn't help or isn't relevant, do you have another graphics card you could test with?  I'm not saying your RTX 4090 is defective, only that it's worth testing.  You would need to DDU the Nvidia driver if you were installing an AMD GPU but not another Nvidia card.

If you don't have anything else to test with, you could remove the Nvidia GPU entirely and plug your monitors into the motherboard.  The Intel iGPU would take over, meaning performance would be significantly worse, but it would still be a good test.  Your computer already has the Intel graphics driver installed.

And I realize this might sound extreme when only one game is crashing, but the errors I've seen have been very clear.  And if it were purely a defect with Sims 4, we'd see a much larger number of posts about it.

I'm not using any known overclocks, I'll have to see if nvida new driver app is implementing a soft OC on its own. Geforce experience for nvida GPUs no longer exists as this new nvida app replaces it.

I'll unseat the 4090 and plug in a monitor to the Motherboard instead and do a quick session test. I also have a separate GPU available as well in my Wifes build I could do a quick swap to if needed to do another basic test.

I've been checking my CPU OC as I know my Motherboard has it's own built in OC parameters that does it own auto OC. 

It's a pro z790-a WIFI. I don't know much or understand CPU OC, so I usually just go with the auto setting but for this current motherboard I would not know where to look to disable that.

I know the 13th and 14th gen intel chips have been having their own issues. From what I understand in other games, crashes that blame the GPU memory are actually in relation to the CPU instead. Have you seen this be true within the Sims as well with crashes in relation to GPU or it's drivers?.

I had a faulty 13th 13900k be RMA around September and be replaced with a 14900k instead. During this transition I updated the bios to a bios release from 2024-09-05 which included the CPU Microcode 0x129. I did not keep up with the intel stuff since that update and RMA and noticed intel released another microcode fix that was supposed to be the "Final" fix for all these issues. This is what I updated to and referenced in my early reply when I said bios had been updated. I wonder during this period if the new RMA intel chip damaged itself as the bios I was on did not actually fully resolved the problem during that time.

I don't play a wide variety of games, the last 5 months for me has been purely New World and escape from tarkov and with this new RMA chip. I noticed some crashing issues every now and then with New World, and recently I've gotten frequent blue screens with escape from tarkov that I had wrapped up to just being a bad performance update in relation to that game. Now this issue with Sims has me second guessing if this is truly an issue  the CPU itself rather then the Games I've happened to play these past few months.

@djf149  The first error is another issue with the graphics driver; the second (the BlueScreen) is something about referencing invalid system memory.  I can take a look at the crash dump from this BSOD, if you want.  It would be in C:\Windows\Minidump, and you'd need to copy and paste it to your desktop, then upload it to a third-party filesharing site and link it here.

The Sims 4 crashes related to motherboard-overclocked CPUs generally list python37_x64.dll, which I didn't see in the Windows Error Reports in any of your dxdiags.  I also haven't seen any CPU overclocking errors that resulted in a crash of the Nvidia graphics driver.  That doesn't mean that you absolutely don't have this issue, only that it would be, from my perspective at least, a unique presentation.

If you want to test anyway, and it wouldn't hurt, the setting you're looking for is CPU Turbo Boost, and it would be buried somewhere in the Advanced BIOS settings.  Exactly where depends on the motherboard.  While you're there, it might be helpful to disable XMP as well.  Your most recent BSOD doesn't have to be RAM-related, but it's always a possibility, and RAM errors can look like just about anything else.

If you do have some time to test with both your system and your wife's, I would suggest swapping one component at a time, at least the compatible ones, to see whether you can isolate the problem.  I'm not totally convinced this is a hardware issue either, but at this point, you've done a lot of troubleshooting on the software side.  The GPU is still the place to start.

As far as a damaged CPU goes, it's possible but unlikely, as far as I've seen or read.  There was an issue with Asus boards and AMD chips around two years ago, but I hadn't heard that Intel chips were routinely being fried, just overclocked past the point of stability, leading to crashes.  And while I'm not convinced that the BIOS update that was supposed to fix the problem actually worked for everyone, I also haven't had more than one or two people, out of at least two dozen, say that nothing worked to fix that exact type of crashing.

Anyway, let me know what you find, and we can go from there.