Black Screen Blue Ring - Sims 4 Won't Work
I purchased The Sims 4 through Steam with several DLCs. After hours and hours of trying to fix it and reading forums it still doesn't work. Long story short Steam says I played the game 4 hours and won't give me a refund. I am beyond frustrated - I just want it to work or get my money back. I posted on here a few days ago and roberta591 was nice enough to reply some suggestions. Those posts were somehow deleted on here and I am unable to read and try the suggestions.So here is what happens:
1. Downloaded Sims through Steam and all the DLCs.
2. Fresh install and installed Origin
3. Try to play (through Steam, the desktop shortcut, and origin all of them do exactly the same thing). Small black screen briefly pops up through steam that says "setting up for the first time".
4. Computer goes straight to a black screen with a spinning blue circle locks up never loads, never moves. Alt tab won't close it, task manager won't close it. Originally I thought it was trying to download so I let it sit there and left the computer. Came back (apparently 4 hours later as says Steam) nothing ever loaded. Same black screen with blue ring. Steam shows I was logged in and playing those 4 hours. I have yet to see anything resembling a game pop up.
5. Restart through task manager restart
I have cleared Steam's download cache, changed origin to admin, set origin to play on my nvidia card, and all sorts of other random suggestions online. Some of them I didn't understand and when it got all "delete all the things" I was unsure of what was safe and not safe to do.
I would really appreciate some help. I was so frustrated last weekend trying to fix it my laptop almost ended up as target practice. My dxdiag is attached.
So I did so many combinations of fixes I'm not actually sure if the repair helped but with the uninstalling of all the MSI software I figured it wouldn't hurt. I opened Origin, went into my library, right clicked the Sims icon, did a file validation/repair then I went into game properties and typed Windowed for special commands. It actually doesn't play windowed but it did require me to put that command in and then it immediately came up.
I read somewhere how that portion was a fix for others and specifically issues with an MSI laptop. They went on to discuss a conflict of graphics card also where it was recognizing something onboard when really it was an independent card. I didn't quite understand I guess it was trying to open it with both and they cancelled out.
So my fix was basically uninstall EVERYTHING using Revo that said MSI. I did them one by one and still had the black screen blue ring problem until all of them were gone. Even the battery calibration tool, color tool, everything. My laptop works fine (and is even faster).I just don't have those tools (that I didn't really use anyway). Any tool like software that came with this laptop had to go and then the game pops up no problem every time.
Thank you so much for helping me with this issue - I swear Steam, EA, no one even addresses this issue or will respond I was so frustrated. Its seriously very kind of you to share your knowledge. I would have had no idea what to do and just lost money and patience and been unable to use it.