Hi Guys!

@Royalmodern  There are plenty of reasons Sims 4 might crash.  Do you have a lastcrash.txt file in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4?  If so, please either copy and paste its contents into a post—please use a spoiler tag—or create a .rar file and attach it to a post.

Have you noticed any pattern to the crashes, for example do they always happen while your sims are traveling, or when you access Create a Sim?  If there's no pattern, that's fine; just let me know either way.  Please also let me know whether you use mods and custom content, and if so, whether you've tested without them.

Finally, please run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

Thanks for your quick reply @puzzlezaddict

I don't have a lastcrash.txt file.

It usually crashes after I've been playing for a while. I did open it yesterday though and it crashed within a couple minutes of me starting to play. There's no pattern  with the game though. I don't use mods or custom content. I downloaded one earlier in the week but I deleted it after a couple hours, realizing it would only make the problem worst. 

@Royalmodern  There are a couple different significant errors listed in your dxdiag, both of which should be addressed.  Please first open a File Explorer window and enter C:\Windows\Minidump in the address bar.  For any recent (in the last three or four days) files you see, right-click and select Copy, then right-click on the desktop and select Paste.  From there, please upload the files to a third-party filehosting site and link it here.  If there are a number of files, you can zip them together first: highlight them all, right-click and select Send to > Compressed (zip) file, and you'll get one .zip.

Please also link the driver download page for your HP laptop.  I can't be sure I'm looking at the correct page, and I don't want to link the wrong download(s), but you can find it yourself.  Go here:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/laptops

Enter your laptop's serial number, choose the OS (Windows 10) if necessary, and you'll land on the driver download page for your laptop.  Please link it here.  The download page doesn't have any information specific to your own system, just downloads for your model.

@puzzlezaddict no files were found at all. 

@puzzlezaddict  is there something else I can look for?

@Royalmodern  The files could have been deleted if they happened long enough ago, or they could be deleted by a cleaner app that removes temp files.  If you have a cleaner app, please uninstall or at least disable it; right now, it's more important to gather information rather than to keep your hard drive tidy.

Please do link the HP driver download page though, so I know which downloads you might need and can link the correct versions.  HP is very picky about which laptops can download which drivers, and with good reason, but without that page, I'd have to guess, and I don't want to link the wrong downloads or give you a list and have you try each one until something works.

You can also force your system to generate a crash dump, that is if your computer is crashing in a way that would generate a dump.  Here's how:

• Hit the Windows key, type "command prompt" in the box, right-click on Command Prompt in the search results, and select Run as Administrator
• In the window, paste "reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\devenv.exe" /v DumpType /d 2 /t REG_DWORD" without the outside quotes into the box, and enter
• Launch Sims 4 and wait for it to crash (whether you can play at all or not)
• After it crashes, wait for any crash dialogs to finish, or if you can't see anything and need to manually shut down, wait five minutes first
• Hit Windows key-R and paste "%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps" without quotes into the box, and enter
• Upload the last .dmp file to pastebin and drop a link here, as before
• When you want to undo the auto crash log dumps, open Command Prompt as before, paste "reg delete "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /f" without the outside quotes, and enter.

Playing in windowed mode rather than fullscreen or windowed fullscreen may allow you to alt-tab back to your desktop, even after the game has locked up.  You can switch to windowed mode in the graphics settings part of game options, or by entering -w as a command line argument in Origin: open your game library, right-click on the Sims 4 icon, select Game Properties > Advanced Launch Options, and you'll see the command line.

@puzzlezaddict Here is the link for the drive: https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-14s-dq1000-laptop-pc-series/29205786/model/33492406?sku=9FD08EA

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\devenv.exe" /v DumpType /d 2 /t REG_DWORD - it says the system cannot find specified path. with and without the middle quotes. 

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\devenv.exe this bit works though

@Royalmodern  The command starts a bit before the part you copied and pasted:

reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\devenv.exe" /v DumpType /d 2 /t REG_DWORD

I left out the outside quotes; please try copying and pasting exactly the above command.  When you're done, the command to reverse the change is:

reg delete "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /f

@puzzlezaddict I'm feeling so daft. What am I doing wrong?

It just says "ERROR ACCESS DENIED"

I'm sorry for being such a huge bother.

@Royalmodern  Are you in an admin user account on your computer, and are you using the "Run as administrator" option for Command Prompt?  I tried this same command last night, just to make sure it worked, and it was fine.  But it does need the proper permissions to run, and it's possible something else is going on with yours.

You're not being a bother; it's just that given the errors in your dxdiag, I really want to see exactly what the underlying cause of the crashes turns out to be, again if the crashes are even the type that would create a crash dump.  If no crash dump is created, that would be interesting too: it would say something about the nature of the crashes that's worth knowing.