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sims29032020's avatar
6 years ago

Installing Origin and Sims 4 on Win 8 - updatetool.exe error

My laptop is running Win 8 and I have recently purchased the 2 disc set of Sims 4.  I have installed and uninstalled the Origin app many times but I keep getting an error that UpdateTool.exe has stopped working.  I have downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio debugger, and now I am getting the error message: Unhandled exception at 0x76AAF59D (KernelBase.dll) in UpdateTool.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation writing location 0x00000000.  

I do NOT want to update to Win 10!

2 Replies

  • @sims29032020  Origin runs fine in Windows 8, at least most of the time.  But if you installed the version of Origin on your Sims 4 discs, you may have installed a very outdated version, one that has trouble even properly updating itself.  Please follow these guides for clearing Origin's cache and uninstalling "the hard way" to remove all traces of Origin from your computer.

    https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/

    https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/

    Download the full Origin installer and run it as an admin: right-click on the download and select "Run as administrator."  This is a direct download link:

    http://download.dm.origin.com/origin/live/OriginSetup.exe

    Once Origin is installed, run it as an admin too, at least until you have Sims 4 installed and running.  By the way, it's probably more efficient to download Sims 4 directly from Origin rather than installing via disc.  That way, the game will already be fully patched.

    If you get any more errors, please take a screenshot and attach it to a post.  Please also run a dxdiag and attach it.

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

  • sims29032020's avatar
    sims29032020
    6 years ago

    Thank you for your help PuzzleAddict!  The link you provided is the same link I tried several times (where I tried to install from the file called OriginSetup.exe), and I was having problems with it as it wasn't updating properly. 

    It turns out there is a newer version of Origin (the installer file is called OriginThinSetup.exe) that is downloadable from https://www.origin.com/aus/en-us/store/download.

    I followed the instructions for uninstalling "the hard way" and ran OriginThinSetup.exe as administrator. As I had already redeemed the product code that came with the The Sims 4 2-disc set, the game appeared in My Game Library, and now I am waiting for the game to download from Origin.

    Fingers crossed for a successful Sims 4 download!

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