After the recent businesses and Hobbies patch, the game loads up freezes on the EA screen for a while, then brings up the loading screen. Then the screen freezes and the game crashes. No mods. I have tried repairing, a fresh reinstall, nothing. I have attached my dxdiag file.
So, I have done all recent system updates, uninstalled and reinstalled the runtimes, and run a repair on the game, but for some reason this crash still and only happens when I adjust and apply the graphics settings. After that, I won't be able to access the game until I delete the options.ini file, and the game regenerates a new one.
OrionSkybourne1 Does this happen no matter which setting(s) you change? Rather than simply switching from low to high, try changing one or two settings at a time to see what happens. And quit and restart your game after making the changes (at the Main Menu) and before loading a save.
Your computer's graphics chip is under the minimum requirements for Sims 4, which doesn't mean you can't play, but may mean that you can't play at the graphics settings you want. The game should definitely not crash when you change a setting—the normal results are lag/low framerates and occasionally some graphical glitches. But hopefully you'll be able to adjust the settings to something you like.
If the game crashes no matter which setting you change, you can try editing Options.ini to impose the settings instead. The relevant entries are scattered throughout the file, but you can use ctrl-F to search. Try raising these by one number each (one at a time) to see what happens:
terrainquality
edgesmoothing [0 is off, 1 is on]
visualeffects
simquality
visualquality
lightingquality
viewdistance
objectquality
advancedrendering [i.e. laptop mode; 0 is off, 1 is on]
generalreflections
postprocessing [0 is off, 1 is on]
The idea here is that perhaps the problem is the game attempting to change the settings, not the settings themselves, and your editing Options.ini would get around that.
So I seem to have solved the problem....at least for now. I was having an issue downloading docs via any internet browser, and found that a background setting "anti malware" on my nord vpn was blocking the docs. I turned that off and suddenly I can play my game as normal.
So, I edited the Options.ini file. When I try to load into the game it crashes at the loading screen again. When I reversed my changes, it allowed me back into the game smoothly. It does this whenever I adjust anything in the graphics settings in particular.
OrionSkybourne1 That's very strange. Have you changed any options within the Intel graphics software? I don't have an Intel GPU to test with, so I don't know what options the app currently offers, but perhaps you've had a look around. For comparison, Nvidia's GeForce Experience has an option to "optimize" the settings for any or all games, and that overrides the settings players might impose within the game. This conflict can occasionally cause a crash too.
Here's a guide to the current software, although yours may look a bit different since your graphics driver is a little old and Intel has made a lot of changes in the last couple years:
At any rate, reverting to default settings, if that's an option somewhere, is worth trying.
I'd also like to know whether editing Options.ini to switch from fullscreen to windowed mode causes a similar crash. There's nothing about either mode that should be a problem for your computer, and if you can't edit Options.ini to set fullscreen to 0 or 1, that points to a different source of error.
If that doesn't help, please try playing in a new admin Windows account. Make it local, as in, don't link it to your Microsoft account. You'll be able to launch the game, and try to change the settings (first fullscreen mode, then a different single option) both within the game and through Options.ini.
