Infinite Loading Screen

@itsissabel  Just to be clear, this happens when you try to start a new save with no mods or custom content present?  If you haven't tested exactly that, please do so now.

If that doesn't or didn't help, please run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

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

i am also having this issue after the new update/

@delacrdj200  Where exactly do you see the infinite loading screen: when the game first starts to load, or when you choose a save?  If the latter, can you load a new save?  What about a different household (one you've never played) in your current save?

Additionally, if you use mods or custom content, please test without it, as in, move the Mods folder to the desktop and delete localthumbcache.package.  You don't need to save your progress.

Hello! The infinite loading screen happens when I try and resume my game as well as start a new game. And yes, I have tried to open my game without mods and cc and I still have the loading screen problem.

Same issue here. I managed to start a new game, but when my sim left the high school to go back home, I got the infinite loading screen. I've been waiting for almost twenty minutes for the game to load, with no luck. I didn't have this issue before the patch.

I have the same issue. I can't play my game at all. This might be the right track though, not sure:

I play in a historical save file. I was having an issue where my cows would not show up in their shed. I kept buying new cows only for them to get stuck in cow purgatory (my household inventory), unable to be rescued. "Assign animal to shed" did not work. Deleting the shed did not work. I kept getting notifications about my sad cows. I had the same household inventory for six generations and the cows didn't die. I had the heir move to a new household to clear the inventory. Bought a cow. Big mistake. Cycle repeated, but since it wasn't technically breaking my game I ignored it.

After this patch, the only households that give me the infinite loading screen are ones that had the cow glitch. This includes any sim that was previously in a household with the glitch (example, one of my heir's sisters moved in with her husband. Their family won't load either.) All other households load. This was after I removed all mods, cleared cache and reinstalled the game -- the only thing I brought back to the new folders was my saves. I even tried moving the families to new "households" by moving one out and then doing the "add to family" cheat on the rest of them, but I got the infinite loading screen again when the family was back together. Restoring old saves did not fix this either. Also worth noting that I can't visit cow-plagued lots with families that will load either.

TLDR; cows might be too blame?

Don't know if anyone else's infinite loading families had cows in it, but it's all I have to go on after 3 days of trying to fix this. Could be right, could be wrong, but I'm desperate after being unable to get my sims stress relief ☹️

I’m having the same issue too. I can’t get into any played household that was created before the update.

I can get into unplayed households in the same save file but when I try to load my main households it’s just stuck infinitely loading.

I can make new saves and they work fine, it’s just my pre-update saves.

I’ve tried a new sims 4 folder, deleting cache, moving my mods out of the folder & repairing the game.

Mine's the same, I can only get into the last sims I was playing who were on Vacation. I can't end it, Extend or even open up the other half of the family that wasn't on the vacation. I'm not even able to open up my task manager to close the game, I have to turn off my whole PC to get access to it again. 

@itsissabel  Your dxdiag lists two generic Windows update errors, so please run a couple of basic checks of your Windows system files:

• Hit Windows key-X
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Windows Terminal (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
• Inside the window that appears, copy and paste “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes, and enter
• The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here
• After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key-X again
• Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Windows Terminal (Administrator)”
• Inside the window, copy and paste “sfc /scannow” without quotes, and enter
• Post the message you receive here

Restart your computer, hit Windows key-i, select Update & Security, and click the box to check for updates.  If any install, restart again afterwards.

The dxdiag also lists a couple of serious crashes of the graphics driver, so the next step would be to update the driver.  However, I can't tell you whether HP offers a newer driver for your exact laptop because the dxdiag doesn't list the exact model number.  So you'll need to find the support page yourself.  Go here:

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

Enter your serial number, choose your OS (just Windows 11 is fine) if prompted, and you'll land on the driver download page.  Don't use the auto-update option; instead, click All Drivers, expand Driver-Graphics, and look for an Intel driver that's newer than yours, which has a version number of 26.20.0100.7926.  Anything numbered 27 or newer would be more recent, as would be 26-something that ends with a number higher than 7926.

If you don't know what you're looking at, please link the driver download page.  This page doesn't contain any information about your own computer, just the overall model.

If you do find a newer driver, download it and run it as an admin: right-click the download and select "Run as administrator."  Restart your computer after installing and before trying to play.

@DarkxArtemis @moffnat and @Ineedspace  It sounds like your issues are all different from the original poster's, and different from each other, despite all being under the umbrella of infinite loading.  The issue is that infinite loading can have many causes—everything from a game bug to a hardware failure—so each instance should be handled on its own, at least at first.  On that note, please each create a new thread in Game Issues describing what you see.  You can copy and paste what you've written here if it's easier.

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Game-Issues/bd-p/the-sims-4-game-issues-en

@Outdated_Garlic  If your main lot has a lot challenge applied, for example Off the Grid, that's probably the issue.  Please use this bug report for OtG:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/OPEN-Off-the-grid-lot-challenge-keeps-lot-from-loading/td-p/14051036

Otherwise, please post in Game Issues too.  The fact that other households and new saves work fine indicate that this isn't a tech issue but rather a problem with your main households, and as I mentioned in your thread on the EA forums, there's nothing problematic in your dxdiag.

@puzzlezaddict I did everything you said to do but I still get an infinite loading screen when I try and play the game unfortunately.

The only thing that I did that was different than you said was when it game to downloading the Intel driver. For some reason it wouldn't let me put the OS as Windows 11, only Windows 10, so that was what I picked, but I was able to find one that started with 27 so I downloaded that. I'm not sure if that was wrong.

This was the message I got when I did the "sfc/scannow" thing: Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them. For online repairs, details are included in the CBS log file located at windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For offline repairs, details are included in the log file provided by the /OFFLOGFILE flag. PS C:\Users\isabe>