Black Screen Problem/Must Reset PC
I've been playing the Sims 4 since release and never had this problem. Last night, I was playing and both monitors went black. The external, larger monitor said No Signal and there was no way for m...
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@hollyw26 Thanks for posting the dxdiag, which would have been my first request. It shows that the Alienware Command Center is crashing a lot, and while that may not have anything to do with Sims 4, it's a distinct possibility. So please kill it and any related services in the Task Manager before trying to play Sims 4; make sure to check the background processes list as well.
The software will restart with Windows, so this is only a temporary fix. If it helps, you can try uninstalling the app altogether. It will likely reinstall, but that's fine as a test—its current installation might be corrupt, in which case a reinstall would fix it.
If you get another black screen and the Alienware Command Center was definitely not running, please 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 your most recent black screen, with ACC not running. If you find one, 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.
Thanks very much for your analysis. I will turn off ACC and do a reinstall, it's concerning that it's crashing like that.
However, here is the good news. I've been playing with the 'Vanilla' reinstalled version, with success for two days. I then put back in a few CC items (hair, clothes) with success. Then I put back all of my CC, which is a lot, and still played successfully with the new install. Finally, I put back in my Saves and my Tray files, and the game immediately crashed (black monitors).
This morning I read up on how the saves work, and used the Load Game to recover an older save (luckily I have quite a few). The game is running fine, so I do believe I had a corrupted save file. I think I only lost a few hours of game time.
However, I'm going to turn off ACC now and get that resolved before I trust that it won't corrupt another save. This has really been a learning experience for me!
Now I have to kill off my elders, as I went over 200 Sims, since I play a generational game. I hate killing any of them! But, I have a ton of babies and families, so I can't keep them all around.
Holly
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