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LisaMarieMuelle's avatar
6 years ago

New Alienware M17 won't run Sims 4

Hello!

I just bought a new laptop specifically to play games and just installed all of my Sims 4 packs. (Got it today)

It's an Alienware M17 and I put the Dxdiag in here.

I can load the game but during CAS or once I finish in Cas and want to move them somewhere the screen goes white and stays like that.

Even with task manager I cant close the game or do anything so i have to restart the laptop completely. I get this notification "Application TS4.exe has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware"

Can anyone help me? I just got it and spent a lot of money to play nicely but now it doesn't work....

I already tried to assign TS4 to the nvidia graphics card but it still crashes

Thank you!!

5 Replies

  • @LisaMarieMueller  Your drivers are out of date, and given the error you listed, the best approach is to do a clean install of both the Intel and Nvidia drivers.  Here's how to do it:

    First, download Display Driver Uninstaller from here:

    https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1750

    You can download new drivers directly from the Dell product page for your laptop.  Be sure to get both drivers; they're all the way at the bottom of the page when you click "show all 39 drivers."

    https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/alienware-m17-laptop/drivers

    Next, take your computer completely offline—disable wifi and/or pull the ethernet cord—and double-click the DDU.exe.  Take note of where the file will land, and click Extract.  If it's easier, you can copy the path (ctrl-C) and then paste it (ctrl-V) into the address bar in a File Explorer window.  Open the folder and then Display Driver Uninstaller.exe, and you'll get a message that you're not in Safe Mode.  Click OK, then go to Options and enable Safe Mode dialog.  Here's a screenshot of what your options should look like:

    Close options, and the DDU, and then open the DDU.exe again.  For launch options, choose "Safe Mode (Recommended)," and then click Reboot to Safe Mode (you'll need your password, so find it before rebooting).  Once you login, you'll see this:



    Choose GPU, then Nvidia, then click Clean and Restart.  Your computer will restart in normal mode.  Launch the DDU again, reboot into Safe Mode, and repeat the above steps, but this time, choose Intel instead of Nvidia in step 2.

    After your computer reboots into normal mode, still offline, you can install the Intel driver, then reboot, and then install the Nvidia driver and reboot again.  For the Nvidia driver, choose a custom install, and only install the driver and the PHYSX software.

    If it helps, you can print this out, since you won't be able to go back online and have a look until you're done with the whole process.

  • I did it exactly the way you told me but once I started the game it automatically crashed my Laptop again and showed me the blue error screen with "VIDEO-TDR-FAILURE". 

    Yesterday I also tried deinstalling/reinstalling new ones and disabling/inabling both drivers together with someone from Microsoft over chat for 2h. I also already did the whole cmd.exe thing as an administrator with the "/Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth" and "/Restorehealth".

    In the beginning it always showed me "VIDEO-SCHEDULER-INTERNAL-ERROR". (after i used it the first times) and once i started doing and repairing stuff it always gave me "VIDEO-TDR-FAILURE".

    I also checked it on the website of Dell and had to download some Intel Chipset Device Software like 2h ago and installed something for the bios (?). But nothing helped still...

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    6 years ago

    @LisaMarieMueller  Do you play other games on this computer, and if so, which ones?  It would also be helpful to see a couple of crash dumps.  Open a File Explorer window and type C:\Windows\Minidump\ into the address bar.  Please grab the newest two or three dump files—copy them and paste them to your desktop.  If you can't attach them to a post, upload them to a free filesharing site and link it here.

  • this same thing happened to me.  Where you able to get it fixed?  I changed mine from 64-bit to 32 bit and it works, but the new expansion packs won't work on a 32-bit.  I don't know what any of that means, but I had to download Sims 4 Legacy in order to play the game.  I have a brand new Alienware gaming PC.

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