@ladyboxx Windows Defender is generally fine, both in terms of protection and in allowing the apps you'd actually want to use. But Controlled Folder Access can act up sometimes. In case you haven't found the relevant settings, here's a good guide:
https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/03/windows-10-defender-controlled-folder-access.html
If that doesn't help, please create a new admin Windows account. Make it local, as in, don't link it to your Microsoft account. You'll be able to (try to) launch Sims 4 without reinstalling anything; let me know how it goes.
Tried that today, as well as doing a clean reinstall of my drivers with NVIDIA's tool which didn't get rid of the error. Then I used the -w command to force the game to launch in windowed mode. Without my mods, it launches fine, but even when I remove the command line the settings won't let me change to fullscreen saying "unable to change display settings, reverting to previous settings", I even tried alt+enter. With mods, it becomes nonresponsive on the loading screen. So then I used -f to force the game into fullscreen, it launched so I added one subfolder of my mods in that I know for a fact the game launched fine with the other day when I was slowly readding the mods in, and it gave me the error again even when I removed the mods until I deleted thumbnail.cache then it launched again, but the next time I got the error back.
Game launched fine the three times I tried on a local administrator account so problem must be connected to my account but I don't understand how to fix this. I think I've tried everything I can now, and all my other games work fine. I don't know what is causing this error and I honestly don't even think I'll be able to play the game again.
@ladyboxx The easiest path may be to play in the new admin Windows account. I'm not saying your current account is unfixable, only that it might take more effort to find the problem than is worth it to you. And I'm not sure I'll be able to figure it out, although I'll keep trying as long as you're interested.
For the new account, whether you want to use it permanently or only until you find the problem in the old account, you can transfer your saves and other user data easily enough. Open a File Explorer window, click This PC in the left panel, double-click the C drive, and open Users > Public. This folder is accessible from any account on the computer. While in the old account, drop your saves and anything else you'd like to use into this folder, then grab the files once you're back in the new account.
Keep in mind that some of your mods and custom content may be broken, or if none of them are now, that will probably change after the new patch drops in a few hours. So you may want to save yourself some time and only test the files after the patch, or play without mods and cc until your favorite creators release updates.
Alright, I'd like to play on my regular windows account if possible but I suppose I'll have to make do unless I can fix the problem. I'm dreading the new patch ☹️ hoping it doesn't screw things up worse than they are
edit: ok after I went back on my regular account from local to check if the game would launch, it did but all my ingame settings were reset so I fixed that, and then I did the patch update and slowly added all my mods back in (with the exception of script mods, I'll have to wait for updates), and I would've had to launch the game about 70 times but it worked fine all those times. I'm really hoping the patch somehow fixed my problem and that the error doesn't randomly come back like it did before.
@ladyboxx The patch itself wouldn't fix the issue, but it may have repaired or replaced a file that was triggering the problem for you. Whatever the case, the important point is that it's fixed (for now). If you run into more trouble, please test again in the new Windows account and let me know whether it helps, and we can go from there.
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