My Game Crashes Every Few Minutes

hollyw26  Thanks for the dxdiag, which lists one crash of the Nvidia graphics driver and two that may be related to your high-end processor and some default overclocking settings.  Let's start with the latter first.  This issue is often fixed with a BIOS update, so please update yours.  I believe this is your model:

https://www.dell.com/support/product-details/en-us/product/alienware-aurora-r16-desktop/drivers

You can double-check by clicking This Device and entering your service tag.  If it is the right model, please install BIOS version 2.14.0, which is newer than your currently-installed 2.12.  Then try again to play.

If this doesn't help, please do a clean uninstall and reinstall of the graphics driver, as described here:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/02/clean-re-install-of-graphics-drivers-with-display-driver-uninstaller-ddu.html

If that doesn't help either, please look for new errors in the Reliability Monitor.  Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes, and you'll see a chart of errors and updates with a column for each day.  Today is on the right.

Look for errors that happened at exactly the time of any Sims 4 crash from after you updated the BIOS.  (I don't need to see the older ones.)  If you find one, double-click it to see more details, then copy that info and paste it into a reply here.  I'd like everything you find except for exact duplicates.  If you don't see a new error, check back in an hour or so—the Reliability Monitor doesn't always update right away.

Hello,

I think I have done everything as recommended, but the problem persists.  The BIOS is now at 2.14, and I uninstalled the NVIDIA driver, then used the NVIDIA app to reinstall.  However, it just crashed again, after all changes were made.  Do you see the reason on the attached file?  I'm guessing it's still the video driver, but I am not familiar with the DXDiag report.

Thanks in advance,

Holly

Here's the perfmon /rel result for 2:18, the time of the last crash.

hollyw26  Please do a clean uninstall and reinstall of the Nvidia driver as described in the thread I linked.  It's the most thorough way to approach the problem, and we can't eliminate the driver itself as a source of error unless you do this.

For the Reliability Monitor info, right-click the name of the error and select "View technical details," then post what you see there.  I'd like any errors from after you clean-uninstall the graphics driver.

I appreciate the help you have provided, however I have had no success and my game still closes.  It will load, I get the resume game screen, sometimes into the lot, but then it crashes.

I could never get the DDU thing to work, sorry, I got tired of trying.  I am about to give up on this game.  It just won't run on this high end PC I bought just for this game.  I have gone as far as to restore the PC from the original settings, since it worked when I first got it, but now it doesn't work at all, the game just closes back to the desktop.  Here's my latest dxdiag, but I assume it will be the same thing.

Dell came out and installed a new CPU on my PC (only 7 months old) and now everything runs fine.  I don't understand it all, but my game is running smoothly now.

hollyw26  Do you mean that Dell support replaced the processor inside your computer?  If so, did you get the same CPU or a different one?  I'd be curious to know given the errors in your first  two dxdiags.

If you're not sure what the new CPU is, you can see it on the first page of a dxdiag, right at the top.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-14900KF (32 CPUs), ~3.2GHz

Yes, they actually sent a guy out and he put in the same processer I had before.  This makes no sense to me, as my only problem was the Sims 4 crashing.  I could play Inzoi just fine, which seems like another oddity, as I would think the system demand was probably much higher.  I do have a ton of CC and mods for the Sims 4, but why I needed to replace the processor still makes no sense to me.  I'm just glad I paid for the premium support plan, so it was no cost to me.  Game is running great now.