New external SSD drive for Sims 4, getting a lot of errors for some reason

@seashellcats  Is your user data (saves, mods, etc.) on your external drive, or is the game installed there, or both?  Does your computer run Windows or macOS?

And when you say you reset your laptop, do you mean you wiped it entirely, or something else?

My mods and cc are on my computer drive, and the game is on the external hard drive. My computer runs on Windows. Yes, I reset my laptop wiped clean. 

@seashellcats  Please rename the Sims 4 folder in Documents > Electronic Arts to something that doesn't include "Sims 4" in its name.  This will prevent the game from reading it but not delete your data (saves, mods, etc.), the idea being to find out whether the game works with no user data.  Let me know either way.

If you still can't play, then the next step is a clean uninstall and reinstall of the game, and the EA App for good measure.  Please use Revo Uninstaller (the free version is fine) to remove both, and restart your computer before reinstalling either one.

Make sure the Sims 4 folder you renamed still has a different name so that Revo doesn't flag it for deletion.

Finally, before reinstalling, make sure your SSD is formatted as NTFS.  You can check by clicking Windows key-X and selecting Disk Utility.  If it uses something else, e.g. exFAT, you'll need to format it before reinstalling the game.

When installing Sims 4, create a folder on the root level of the drive and select that.  For example, you might install into D:\Games\ rather than simply D:\ or D:\folder 1\folder 2.

OMG....I knew I missed something.. but i'll try it to do your method. I'll let you know what happens next. Thanks.

Okay, I reinstalled EA app and the Sims game with Revo Uninstall, I backup my CC and Mods, CC works okay, but the mods were just not acting right. I keep getting errors when I add a single mod. I just downloaded them. Then I realized that the update on October 1,2024 or Maybe it was September 18 I don’t know, that the sims added a feature to switch from Directx 11 or Directx 9. Maybe some mods support Directx 11. I think they don’t support Directx 9. So I think I should switch to DX 11. Here’s my DxDiag. 

Wow….even if I went to DX11 or DX9, I still get crashes and guess what else happened? Surprise! A infinite loading screen! Good job EA. Good job. Thanks for making me not play the Sims ever AGAIN. With CC and Mods or not. 

@seashellcats  You should be able to run Sims 4 in DirectX 11 mode, and it should use that mode by default.

Does the game work with no mods or cc at all?  Please test and let me know.  I realize you probably don't want to play like this long-term, but it's important to establish whether this content is contributing to the issue.

Alright, so I reinstalled it again, went to “view properties and set it to “-dx11”,played it for a while on base game and everything is working. I lowered my graphic settings because usually it’s set to Ultra. So I turned off Edge Smoothing and lowered the sim and the lighting. I put on Reshade on first to see if that was the cause of it to crash. I used the latest Reshade and everything is still fine. Then I added one piece of CC and that worked. So I guess I think the reason why it was crashing because my graphic settings and my Reshade wasn’t updated. However my CC and Mods work now. 

It crashed again. Is my laptop good enough to play sims? I don’t know. My cc and mods are fine. I guess I have to keep uninstalling and reinstalling…*sigh* My sims game is running on 32bit. 

Sigh, I reinstalled it again, but this time I put -dx9 instead of DX11. Also, mods and cc are working so far. I had put it on laptop mode for now on to make sure it won’t crash this time. Also because of my hard drive. I guess my lesson is, if it crashes, uninstall and reinstall it again and backup your mods and cc to make sure you won’t lose any data. I know my laptop support DX12 and DX11 I might have to stick with DX9.