Game opens to a black screen

skytitan74​  Thanks for the dxdiag, which lists a few serious crashes of the graphics driver, ones that would certainly take down Sims 4 if they happened as the game loaded.  So please do a clean uninstall and reinstall of the driver, as described here:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/02/clean-re-install-of-graphics-drivers-with-display-driver-uninstaller-ddu.html

If you still can't play, 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 attempt to open Sims 4.  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.

I only want an error from after you reinstalled the driver.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the driver but the problem persisted. I got two errors right after each other. The most recent one was:

The program TS4_x64.exe version 1.115.216.1030 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.

And the one right before it:

Source
Windows

Summary
Hardware error

Date
‎6/‎1/2025 12:59 PM

Status
Not reported

Description
A problem with your hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name:    LiveKernelEvent
Code:    141
Parameter 1:    ffffc2834e379050
Parameter 2:    fffff8012b196740
Parameter 3:    0
Parameter 4:    0
OS version:    10_0_26100
Service Pack:    0_0
Product:    768_1
OS Version:    10.0.26100.2.0.0.768.101
Locale ID:    1033

Files that help describe the problem
WATCHDOG-20250601-1259.dmp
sysdata.xml
WERInternalMetadata.xml
memory.csv
sysinfo.txt
WERInternalRequest.xml

skytitan74​  This is another crash of the graphics driver, which shouldn't happen after you reinstalled the driver.  So it's possible this is a hardware error, although there are other possibilities too.

Do you have a friend or family member who could loan you another GPU to test with?  Given the power needs of your 1660 ti, you wouldn't want to try to run something high-end, but a 1060/1650/2060/3050 should be fine.

Your system doesn't have integrated graphics, so you can't test that way, unfortunately.

Separately, is your computer still under warranty, or do you have some kind of extended service contract with Dell?  I'm not saying you should go out and spend a lot of money to get this fixed, at least not yet, but if you have free or cheap help available, go for it.  The magic words are "LiveKernelEvent 141 after doing a clean uninstall of the graphics driver with Display Driver Uninstaller."

Would the graphics card affect other games not on EA? All of my other games are working fine

skytitan74​  That depends on what other games you're playing.  Aside from how demanding they are, relative to Sims 4, there's also the question of what resources they require.  So please list the games, or some of them, for comparison's sake.

Still, this is a very clear error at least from the perspective of what happened: the driver failed to respond in what Windows defines as a timely fashion (two seconds is the default), so Windows shut down the driver.  This shouldn't happen in general, and a properly-coded game should NEVER cause it absent some kind of system issue.

I've played Tangled Tower, Unpacking and Stardew Valley. I also just tested Red Dead Redemption 2, the game works but I've lost my save. Not sure if that relevant or not but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

skytitan74​  RDR2 is certainly demanding enough to put your GPU through its paces, lost save or not.  So I don't know exactly what's going on here.  I'd still suggest testing with another graphics card if and when you have the opportunity, if only because it's another useful bit of data.

In the interim, please DDU the driver again and install a slightly older one.  You can find them here:

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

Enter your product details (or really anything in the family or close), and on the Results page, click View More Versions.  You'll want a Game Ready (not Studio) Driver, and a version that's a few months old would be a good test.

I haven't seen any confirmed reports that any new-ish driver, including this one, is incompatible with Sims 4 in any way, but it's always possible that something about your system is not getting along with a combination of the newest driver and Sims 4.  That's speculation too, but it's also an easy test.

Something else you can try is a clean uninstall and reinstall of both Sims 4 and the EA App.  I wrote out how to do it in the solution of this thread, which is for a different issue, but the approach is the same:

[CURRENT ISSUE] Sims 4 DLC shows as installed, won't load in-game | EA Forums - 11831673