Game won't launch on multiple machines - Activation UI.exe issue?
Hello all,
I had Sims4 preloaded on two machines that exceed the minumum requirements, and was unable to get it to launch on either device. I've run through some of the other threads here and tried a few troubleshooting steps other users were directed (safe mode startup, clean boot, disabled security software, ccleaner) and was still unable to get the game to start.
I observe zero visable errors. I click play, the cursor wait animation plays for a few seconds... then nothing.
Another thread mentioned the "activation ui.exe" file as being problematic, so I kept an eye on my task manager to see what went on when I hit play in Origin and noticed that "activation ui.exe" did pop up in the process list for a second or two, then disappeared. Both machines I tried this on seemed to have the same thing happen.
At the moment, I only have access to one of the two machines I experienced this issue on, and it's Dxdiag can be found here: http://pastebin.com/e6cuXYq7
While I wait for assistance here, I'm going to install another recent origin game (specifically, SimCity) to see if there are any similar issues. I've had it installed on this machinge before and it ran fine, so I'm hoping to determine if this issue is specific to Sims4 before going any further.
Ok, I got the game to launch after looking into the link crinrict provided, but its not the best news either.
To put it simply: There was a problem with my windows user profile that caused a specific .dll file to misbehave. The file in question is KERNELBASE.dll (as can be seen in the performance monitor paste above). I tried a number of fixes suggested in that set of posts, but none of them worked. They did, however, educate me on the issue a little bit and I found a way to get it fixed.
In that thread, it was believed that KERNELBASE.dll's problem arose from a corrupted user profile (and subsequent damaged DLL). In my case, several new profiles being made on my machine (and re-testing with Sims4) was not enough to get it running. I guessed since any profile i created on the machine would still point to the fragged DLL file, so it made little difference at that point.
I succumbed to completely restoring windows 8 to factory defaults on my machine (a surface pro gen 1) and after reinstalling the game, it launched just fine.
I wish I had a better solution to offer anyone having the Activation UI.exe/KERNELBASE.dll problem. I had to take the nuclear option, unfortunately. Thankfully, the game works now, and in my case a system reset was not very serious and easy to get the Surface Pro back up to where I had it before.
My other pc which had the same issue may never play the game, as I can't afford to wipe it and start fresh (at the moment, anyway).
I hope this helps someone if they have the same issue. Sorry I don't have a better solution for you.
Thanks to Crinrict for the technical help!
