Input Signal Out of Range Error

Thanks for your continued help! I really appreciate it!

If I do get the money to buy a cable for testing purposes, which cable exactly should I buy? I know nothing about cables or monitors. 

I'm not sure what accessibility software is. So, I don't think I have any?

I haven't had the chance to do a repair install of Windows yet. But I did follow the instructions for playing in a clean boot. I followed the guide exactly (triple-checked to make sure I didn't miss any steps) and I remembered what you said about leaving EABackgroundService enabled. However, things didn't go quite the way the guide said they would. 

There were some programs that simply would not disable. Sometimes I would hit "disable" and it would disable for a fraction of a second, but then re-enable. Then, when I hit "End Task" a pop-up would come up saying "This task cannot be ended." The programs that caused me these problems were McAfee, Dropbox, and a BUNCH of Windows programs that I've never heard of. 

When I tried opening Sims 4 in the clean boot, a little black box came up saying "Preparing game..." with a loading bar. There was a weird clicking sound for a couple seconds that sounded like it was coming from my CD drive, as if it was trying to eject a disc. It never loaded the game; the pop-up just sat there until I ended it via task manager. When I tried opening the EA app, it said "Background services crashed. The background services aren't responding, so we're kicking off the update manually. Stay Put while we get the app up and ready for you." Then it gave me the option to Run Update or Cancel. I chose Run Update. A big black screen came up saying "EA is already working...closing screen in 4 seconds." And it counted down and disappeared. When I tried opening the EA App again, it just brought up the ""Background services crashed" pop-up again. This time, I hit cancel. I tried to run Sims 4 again. It brought up the infinite "Preparing game..." bar again that stayed there until I hit End Task via the task manager. 

Next I tried to follow the instructions to reset the computer to restart normally. The guide (which I had open on my phone; I never opened any browser while I was in the clean boot) told me to go to the General tab and select Normal Startup. Did that. Then it told me to go to the Services tab, uncheck the "Hide all Microsoft services" box, select Enable All, and then hit Apply. However, when I went to the Services tab, the box was already unchecked and everything was already enabled. Which doesn't make sense to me because, when I was preparing the clean boot, I DID check the box, I DID disable all, and I DID hit Apply. But for some reason, it auto-reset? 

Anyway, I followed the rest of the instructions for rebooting the computer normally, and I think everything is back to the way it was before I did the clean boot. 

I just tried opening the EA App again, and it opens normally. And I just tried opening Sims 4 and it did the same old thing of showing the logos and then auto-closing.

@whimsicaltoday  You don't need to disable any Windows processes in the clean boot.  I meant disable any third-party apps that are still running.  A few years ago, we discovered that MSI Afterburner was still active in a clean boot, and a friend of mine ran into trouble with a different EA game because his RGB control software was active in a clean boot as well.  So I always tell people to check, but there's no reason to mess with anything that belongs to Windows.

An antivirus would also object to being disabled, but you can get around that by temporarily disabling real-time scanning.  Here's how to do so in McAfee:

https://www.mcafee.com/support/s/article/000002088?language=en_US

You would of course want to be extra careful with your antivirus disabled, but that's simple enough: don't download anything, don't visit sketchy websites.

I'm not sure why Dropbox would stay enabled, but try telling it not to start with Windows.  It looks like the option should be under Preferences.

As for the new cable, you'd just buy an HDMI cable from a reputable company, or a reputable store.  (Best Buy is fine.)  Some cables are definitely better than others, but you don't need the very highest quality for your monitor because the amount of data being transmitted is relatively low: the monitor has a 1600x900 resolution and is running at 60 Hz; you're not trying to play at 4k and 240 fps.  Point is, buy something that's not junk and you'll be fine, or at least the cable will be fine.  They're not that expensive either.  This is not a recommendation, just an example:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/best-buy-essentials-12-4k-ultra-hd-hdmi-cable-black/6472355.p?skuId=6472355

Did you ever test with the different resolutions?  I'd be interested to know what the results were.

I did test with different resolutions (the two recommendations you made - 1920x1080 and 1280x720). The same thing happened as always: logos show, then it auto-closes. 

I haven't had the chance to do the other tests you recommended yet, such as the repair install or disabling Dropbox and my antivirus, as those are a bit more involved and I'm currently recovering from something serious health-wise (just got out of the hospital). But I DID buy an HDMI cable! I haven't tested it yet, and will try to do so as soon as I'm up to it. 

I did try testing something on my own. I tried reinstalling the NVIDIA GeForce Experience, just to see what would happen. As soon as it installed, it said "A new driver is available!" I clicked it and it showed me a driver that was released on 12/05/24. It prompted me to download it, so I did. It said "Download Failed." I tried again. "Download failed" again. I googled "geforce experience driver download failed" and Google told me this: "If your GeForce Experience driver download is failing, it usually means there's a problem with your internet connection, incompatible drivers for your system, corrupted files, or potential issues with the GeForce Experience application itself; try checking your internet connection, verifying compatibility with your graphics card and operating system, restarting GeForce Experience, performing a clean installation of the drivers, or even reinstalling GeForce Experience if the problem persists." Is this a clue that there really is something wrong with my computer, outside of the Sims 4?

@whimsicaltoday  I would try downloading the driver NOT using GFE and see what happens.  GFE can be cranky sometimes, and sometimes there's a real problem but only with GFE or the way it tries to download the driver.  This certainly could be a system issue, and I still think that's a strong possibility; I'm just saying that this particular error doesn't necessarily mean anything.

If you can install the new driver and don't see any errors, it's probably fine.  You could use DDU again to clean-uninstall the driver, then do a fresh install, to be thorough, but personally I would save that until after the Windows repair install, if you do in fact need it.  A repair install doesn't take a lot of time or effort, especially on an SSD—for me at least, the step that took the longest was waiting for the Windows ISO to download.

This weekend, I was finally well enough to experiment with the computer again. I did what you suggested, a Windows repair install using a mounted ISO and then using DDU to uninstall and reinstall the driver. Good news - it seems to have worked! Sims 4 seems to be running fine now! Windows keeps installing updates; fingers crossed that those updates don't break the game again! Thank you so much for your help! I just have a couple of questions left. 

The guide said that the Windows repair would turn off system protection for drives, and that after the reinstall, I should consider turning on system protection for certain drives. It gave a guide to do so. Should I follow the guide and turn it on for some drives? If so, which drives?

The guide also said that I should carefully consider whether or not to do a disk cleanup after reinstalling the system because, on one hand it can free up space, but on the other hand it deletes certain files so that I can't revert back to an old version of Windows. Should I do the disk cleanup or no?

Part of the process of the repair install was to mount an ISO. After the repair install, the ISO seems to have automatically unmounted itself. Is that okay/normal?

About 20 minutes after completing the repair install and uninstalling/reinstalling the driver, this random error message popped up that said, "error in C:\WINDOWS\system32\PcaSvc.dll Missing entry: PcaWallpaperAppDetect". What does that mean? Should I be concerned or do something to fix it?

@whimsicaltoday  I'm so glad the game is working again.  I wish it hadn't taken so much effort on your part, but sometimes these issues can be hidden or obscure.

For the system protection, in case you don't know what it is, here's a guide:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/system-protection-e9126e6e-fa64-4f5f-874d-9db90e57645a

I personally don't use restore points, but then I like fixing things.  You might benefit from having restore points if something breaks in the future—it would mean less troubleshooting if you could simply revert to the last working restore point.  Your drives certainly have the space for this.  If you want to do it, I would think having it set up for C would be enough, since there are presumably no Windows files or essential drivers on D.  But if setting this up for both drives gives you peace of mind, why not.

I would wait to run disk cleanup for about a week, to make sure everything is still working as intended.  You probably wouldn't want to revert to the older version of Windows anyway, but it's nice to make sure things are stable first.

The ISO can be trashed now, and yes it's normal that it's no longer mounted.

The error you've posted is a known issue with Windows and doesn't look to be serious.  Here's a discussion with some potentially useful links:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1d1ydci/error_cwindowssystem32pcasvcdll_missing_entry/?rdt=39760

Since this is about wallpaper, it alone isn't worth worrying about at all.