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Babzbaggins's avatar
Babzbaggins
Rising Novice
12 days ago
Solved

Freezing and Crashing

The game has become unplayable. 

It will crash and completely freeze my computer. 

It will close unexpectedly. 

I have tried fully uninstalling and reinstalling the game. I have tried a fresh install through steam instead of the EA app. 

I have run the game with no CC or mods. 

Game is fully updated. 

I tried removing the For Rent pack because there have been issues reported, but it made no difference. 

I have cleared cache, tried removing the Sims 4 folder to get a clean folder, done system checks, etc. 

I have removed all of my save files and tray files and started afresh and it is still constantly freezing and crashing. 

I have followed all of the suggested steps to resolve this issue. 

My computer is brand new, more than meets the system requirements, and has shown no issues when I've run diagnostics, virus checks, updates, drivers. 

This is literally the only game I play, and I am currently not able to do so. I have pre-ordered the new pack, which I can't now play because the game won't work for more than a few minutes without crashing. 

  • Babzbaggins​  Your dxdiag lists a few crashes of the graphics driver, or one of them.  Since the Nvidia driver is from 2023, you may simply be able to update it to fix the problem.  I would suggest using a slightly older driver because I've seen a couple reports of issues with the current one, and it's easy to update to a newer driver but more complicated to install an older one.  You can get all the new-enough drivers here:

    https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/

    Choose Game Ready Driver as the Download Type to go back further.  (You don't want the Studio drivers, which are for professional workloads.)  The driver from mid-March should be fine.

    Run the installer as an admin: right-click the download and select "Run as administrator."  Choose the Custom (not Express) install method, and check the box to perform a clean install.  Restart afterwards and before trying to play.

    If you get another crash, 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 Sims 4 crash, specifically after reinstalling the driver.  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.

    Separately, let me know whether the BlueScreens you're getting are happening while you're playing.  I know your computer freezes, but that's different than a shutdown.

7 Replies

  • Babzbaggins​  Please provide a dxdiag.  Click Windows key-R, enter dxdiag in the run box, wait for the scan to finish, click "Save all information," and save the file to your desktop.  From there, you can attach it to a reply using the paper clip (Attachment) icon included with the other formatting buttons.

    There are many issues a dxdiag can reveal that it doesn't flag as actual issues, so the fact that it or your other diagnostics have come up clean doesn't mean there's nothing to find here.

  • Babzbaggins​  Your dxdiag lists a few crashes of the graphics driver, or one of them.  Since the Nvidia driver is from 2023, you may simply be able to update it to fix the problem.  I would suggest using a slightly older driver because I've seen a couple reports of issues with the current one, and it's easy to update to a newer driver but more complicated to install an older one.  You can get all the new-enough drivers here:

    https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/

    Choose Game Ready Driver as the Download Type to go back further.  (You don't want the Studio drivers, which are for professional workloads.)  The driver from mid-March should be fine.

    Run the installer as an admin: right-click the download and select "Run as administrator."  Choose the Custom (not Express) install method, and check the box to perform a clean install.  Restart afterwards and before trying to play.

    If you get another crash, 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 Sims 4 crash, specifically after reinstalling the driver.  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.

    Separately, let me know whether the BlueScreens you're getting are happening while you're playing.  I know your computer freezes, but that's different than a shutdown.

  • Babzbaggins's avatar
    Babzbaggins
    Rising Novice
    11 days ago

    All the crashes, blue screens, lockups are happening when playing the sims. I've had no issues otherwise. I will try the driver fix now. 

  • Looks like the driver was the culprit. I managed to replicate the issue with the more up to date drivers, but rolling back to the March one has stabilised things. Let the game run for a few hours with no dramas, so we can safely say there's some sort of issue with the updated drivers for my system at the moment. Fingers crossed the issue stays gone. 

    Thanks for your help!

  • Babzbaggins's avatar
    Babzbaggins
    Rising Novice
    11 days ago

    **bleep**, spoke too soon; got another crash. 

    /rel information : The previous system shutdown at 05:51:41 on ‎09/‎07/‎2025 was unexpected. 

    I was building, went to raise a platform and the display flickered very briefly, music stuttered and stopped, then the entire computer stopped responding. Mouse movements, keypresses, the works all stopped working, and closing the lid didn't put the computer into sleep mode. Had to hard shutdown with the power key. 

    Its definitely a lot better since I rolled back the driver, because that was the first crash in hours, but there's definitely still something going on. 

  • Babzbaggins​  This dxdiag is full of crashes of the graphics driver.  From what you've described, it's possible that some of these happened on a different driver, but probably at least one was on the driver I suggested using, which is unfortunate.

    If you want to confirm though, the Reliability Monitor is what you'd want to look at, but you'd need to look further than the unexpected shutdown message.  Look for anything that happened before the shutdown, when the game stopped responding.

    LiveKernelEvent 141 is a timeout of the graphics driver: the driver didn't respond in what Windows thinks is a timely fashion, so the OS kills the driver, which in turn makes any graphically-intensive process stop working the way it should.  Your new dxdiag lists only these errors, so they're happening a lot and should be listed in the RM; the question is when they're happening.

    For practical purposes, you could force Sims 4 to use the iGPU, just as a test.  If the game is fine, the problem is the Nvidia driver or GPU, or something in that pipeline at least.

    To force use of the iGPU, you can go through Windows Settings or the Nvidia Control Panel.  For the former, open Settings > System > Display > Graphics settings, click Browse, find TS4_x64, and choose the power-saving option.  Do the same for TS4_DX9_x64.  For the latter, right-click the desktop, select the Control Panel, choose Manage 3D Settings > Program settings, and choose the integrated graphics option for both TS4_x64 and TS4_DX9_x64.  Or you can choose the iGPU under Global settings as a shortcut; just remember you've done this before expecting the Nvidia GPU to be active in some other game.