Game Crashes & Other Issues

@M12SWarthogCST  At least some of this could be explained by mods, so please test with no mods or custom content, as in, move the Mods folder to the desktop.  You don't need to save your progress, or you can use a new save for testing; just let me know which problems are still present.

The Neighborhood Stories settings not applying is partly a bug and partly bad design: it's not always clear which sims are being affected by which setting.  So please double-check your settings within a given save.  Find a household that's been affected, figure out whether they're in My Households or Other Households, and then check both that category and the household-specific settings.  You'll need to do this within the save.

The Sims 4 crash in your dxdiag is an access violation, too generic of an error to be useful by itself.  The faulting module, d3d9.dll, is a component of the DirectX 9 runtime, but DX9 has to be installed and working in general or else the game wouldn't even load.  Still, you can reinstall it if you want.  There's no need to uninstall anything first; just run the installer over the top and restart your computer.  Here's a more detailed description:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Sims-3-launcher-won-t-open/m-p/10711778#M247861

I appreciate your prompt reply. Despite updating and removing all mods, including MCCC, UI Cheats, RPO, and Better Exceptions, the problem remained unresolved. Notably, Better Exceptions did not flag any issues. I attempted to run the game mod-free, yet the problem persisted, leading me to perform a clean installation of both the game and Windows 11. Consequently, I’ve lost all data related to the intermittent crashes that occurred during gameplay, which notably did not precede any lag. After a clean installation, upon loading the game, it crashed again, and this is the only crash for which I have retained information. I can confirm that Neighbourhood Progression was inactive; I had unchecked every option and disabled it in the ‘My Households’, ‘Other Households’, and ‘Settings’ sections.

@M12SWarthogCST  Just to be clear, all the info you've provided is from after you reinstalled Windows?  I think that's what you're saying but want to be sure.

For the crashing itself, I would still reinstall DirectX 9.  It's quick, it's not going to do any harm, and the error clearly points to a component of DX9 even if it's not clearly the fault of DX9 itself.

If you get 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.

Please test in a new save that's never been exposed to your mods.  Don't download any sims or lots from the Gallery, not even your own—some lots broke after patch 1.104, and we get sporadic reports of downloaded sims having various odd issues.  When the game is stable again, you can start experimenting with your old content, whether that's saves, sims or lots, or mods.

Please do continue to provide the error reports for any crashes, just like you did in your original post.  (Or you can post a new dxdiag if it's easier; a dxdiag provides most of the same information.)  List any error that happens at the same time as a crash but doesn't mention Sims 4, since those could also be significant.  And let me know if you get a crash with no accompanying error at all, which would likely be a hardware problem.