Re: Input Signal Out of Range Error

Post-DDU, I've only tried opening the Sims 4 in windowed mode. I don't know how to take it out of windowed mode. Plus, I typically play in windowed mode, so I do have to make sure it can run that way.

I checked my Steam games and they're still showing the "Input Signal Out of Range" error too. So it's not just Sims 4 having an issue, post-DDU.

Unfortunately I don't have the ability to follow your advice with the cables right now. In order to get at them, some heavy furniture would have to be moved, I'm severely disabled, and have no one to help me move it. If it's absolutely necessary, I can save up some money to eventually hire someone to help me move it, and then I could access the cables. But of course, I would rather save that as a last resort. What I can tell you in the meantime is that I had all the cords and everything else hooked up by professionals, plus I have the computer, monitor, and all other parts regularly cleaned with compressed air. I've used this monitor with this computer for four years, and played the Sims 4 (plus many other games) on it hundreds of times without issue. So I find it unlikely for the problem to lie there. I don't have access to any other monitors or cables besides the ones I'm currently using. 

I have thought of a couple more things that could give clues as to what's happening. 

First, when I was custom re-installing the driver yesterday, it asked me if I wanted to do a "regular install" or a "clean install." I didn't know which one to pick, but I went with "clean install." Was that the correct choice? If not, perhaps that's why the issue persists?

Second, I just realized that the problem started soon after reinstalling my Windows 10 operating system. For some reason, my Windows 10 OS gets corrupted a lot – about every 1.5 years. So every 18 months or so, I end up having to load all my files onto an external drive, press the "Reset this PC" button, choose the "remove everything and perform a clean install" option, then reinstall all my programs and load my files back on once it's done. The last time I performed this was about a week ago and, for some reason, it didn't go the way it usually does. I did everything the same way I always do, including the "remove everything and perform a clean install" option. Yet, when the new Windows 10 install was complete, all my files and some of my programs were still on my computer. So I downloaded the few things that seemed to be missing and carried on with my day. I played Sims 4 without issue, as well as Stardew Valley. About 2 days later, a Windows pop-up came up saying something like "Error: Windows could not find any drivers on this computer." (I wonder how it was able to run those games, then, if there were no drivers?) I went to GeForce, downloaded their app, and went through the automated process of installing the newest driver. It was after this that the problems started. I have not been able to successfully run Sims 4 since. I got Stardew Valley to run one time after this, but no more. Due to the timing, I feel like something happened then that is causing the issue now, but I'm not sure what or how to fix it. Should I try resetting the PC again? And what is the proper process of installing drivers after a PC reset, considering my computer was fine running games without (allegedly) any drivers at all, but hiccups now that it has a driver installed?

By the way, I did two full scans – one before resetting my PC and one after – to check for viruses and malware, so neither of those are an issue. 

@whimsicaltoday  The clean install of the graphics driver means the installer removes the previous driver as it's installing a new one.  DDU is more thorough, which is why we recommend it rather than simply choosing the clean install most of the time.  Since you used DDU to remove the previous version of the driver, there shouldn't have been any difference between the regular and clean installs anyway, so don't worry about that part.

I suggested testing the monitor and cables because this could, in theory, be a mechanical issue, and all the software troubleshooting in the world wouldn't fix that and would just waste your time.  But since physically swapping the peripherals is off the table for now, it's perfectly reasonable to keep poking at the software side.  The fact that other games are affected doesn't make it any more likely that this is hardware- or software-related, but it at least takes the Sims 4 angle off the table.

To answer your question about clean-installing Windows, the best way to do it is to create your own ISO, on a USB or downloaded onto the computer, and run it the way you'd run an install on a new computer without an OS.  Here are a couple of good guides:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-clean-install-windows-10-a.html

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/94479-clean-install-windows-10-without-dvd-usb-flash-drive.html

Before doing so, the best practice is to download essential drivers to a separate USB so you can install them manually, with your computer offline.  "Essential drivers" basically means all the drivers the motherboard manufacturer offers plus the graphics driver; Windows will fill in any gaps as appropriate.  I believe this is your board:

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B450-TOMAHAWK/support

But double-check the model number before downloading anything.  You can skip the BIOS, which would be untouched by the fresh Windows install.

So in short, the process is: download drivers from board support page and also the graphics driver; create Windows 10 ISO; disconnect internet; run ISO to clean-install; manually install saved drivers from board support page; restart; manually install graphics driver; restart; reconnect to internet and let Windows download whatever else it wants.

The problem with resetting the PC, or one of them at least, is it can be an incomplete or uneven reset, as you've seen.  It's more work to do a clean reinstall as described above, but then you can be as sure as reasonably possible that you're getting exactly what you want.

So, I've spent the last couple days experimenting with things. I reset my PC again. I found out the reason it didn't fully work last time is because I only reset the C drive last time. So this time, I reset the C and D drives. After that finished, NVIDIA immediately started acting differently. For the first time ever, a NVIDIA pop-up message came up asking me to accept their terms of service. And it even let me open a NVIDIA control panel, which I didn't know was a thing. 

Then Windows auto-updated when I restarted my computer. And for some reason, the update wiped out the NVIDIA control panel. Windows alerted me that it couldn't find a control panel for my drivers and let me redownload it from the Windows store. (Keep in mind, this is the NVIDIA control panel, not the NVIDIA app or GeForce Experience. I don't currently have GeForce Experience downloaded on my computer). 

Then Windows auto-updated again the next time I restarted. This time the NVIDIA control panel seems to still be in-tact post-update. Which I think is good news? But I don't know why Windows keeps updating or why it nuked my control panel the first time.

I decided to redownload my games. I downloaded Steam and installed Stardew Valley. Opened Stardew Valley and it actually took me to the main menu this time! So I assumed it was running fine (more on that later...).

I downloaded the EA app and installed Sims 4. I opened Sims 4 and..."Input signal out of range: 1600x900 60Hz" black screen. Forced to restart my computer. 

After restarting my computer, I went into Options.ini and changed the height and width to the correct numbers and saved. Tried opening the Sims 4 again. "Input signal out of range: 1600x900 60Hz" black screen. Forced to restart my computer once more. 

I go into options.ini again. Change to Windowed mode. I start the Sims 4. It shows the Maxis logo, then the Sims 4 logo...then closes. Back to square one. 

I decide to test Stardew Valley again to make sure it really is still working. I open it and the menu is up and everything. Before I reset my PC this last time, SV couldn't reach the menu and would go straight to the black screen/Input Signal Out of Range error. So, since it was bringing up the menu now, I assumed it was fixed. But then I tried to actually load a save file...and suddenly Stardew Valley auto-closes. Just like the Sims 4 is doing. I'm not sure if that's because this particular Stardew Valley save file originally had mods in it and I don't currently have any mods installed. I could try installing my Stardew mods and see if it opens then. 

Overall though, I seem to have made progress and yet am still stuck in exactly the same place I was at the start, unable to play any of my games.

I included an updated DxDiag in case it's helpful.

When getting the DxDiag, I noticed my current driver is 32 bit. I thought I had a 64 bit driver before? Or am I remembering wrong? Could that have anything to do with anything?

I hope it's okay to post on this thread again, since I didn't get any replies over the weekend. 

My newest update is that I've gotten all my other games to work (adding the mods back into my Stardew Valley game allowed my save file to played fine). It is now JUST Sims 4 I'm having trouble with. It still auto-closes after the logos while in Windowed mode. And outside of Windowed mode, it always shows the "Input Signal Out of Range" error, regardless of what the dimensions are set at in the options.ini file.

@whimsicaltoday  I apologize for the late reply.  I asked someone else to take a look at this thread, to get a second opinion, and then didn't have time to write out a reply right away.

At any rate, please let me know whether clicking alt-enter helps when you get the error message.

If it doesn't, try limiting the in-game framerate.  There are a few ways to do this, but the simplest is by editing Options.ini to set frameratelimit to a lower number than 200.  Try 30 to see what that does.  Please test this in both fullscreen and windowed modes, by editing Options.ini when necessary.

If that doesn't help either, leave the framerate limit in place, and try running the game in fullscreen mode at a higher and a lower supported resolution, again by editing Options.ini.  (I hope that choosing specific resolutions will keep the game from overriding your selection, but tell me if that's not the case.)  Try 1920x1080 and 1280x720, and let me know what happens.

@whimsicaltoday  That's odd, I can see the option right after focusmute and careerlayoff and before cororassistbrightness and safeforstreammusic, about a third of the way down.  Did you ever make this file read-only?  I'm wondering whether an old version of the file didn't have the limit.

Regardless, you can set a Max Frame Rate in the Nvidia Control Panel (right-click the desktop to open it), in Manage 3D Settings, either in Program settings for TS4_x64 and TS4_Launcher_x64 or in Global settings.

For the Reply issue, that's also odd, unless it's a temporary glich, which happens.  Quick Reply is fine for regular text, and you can try using Reply on one of my other posts in this thread.  If that doesn't work and you need to attach a file, which Quick Reply doesn't allow, create a new thread and tag me, saying it's about your old thread.  I'll merge your new post and we can continue from there.

@whimsicaltoday  To make a file read-only, you right-click it and select Properties > General, and check the read-only box.  You can find more robust permissions settings under Properties > Security > Advanced, but keep track of what you change in case you need to revert to defaults.

I'm glad alt-enter worked, but it's a small victory.

I don't know what's going on with your account that you can't reply or make new threads, and I don't have any visibility into that kind of issue.  I do remember another user a while back who had the same problem or a similar one, and the forum admin worked with them to try to fix it, which I took to mean there was no ban or any other EA-side action.  It didn't get fixed as far as I know.  But I can flag the issue if you like.

It would be interesting to see whether this happened in a different browser.  And if all else fails, forums.ea.com might work, and it also uses your EA account.  You could post there to continue the conversation... that is if the problem is contained to this site, which it should be.

Well, it looks like it's letting me reply normally today! I didn't do anything differently. Did you do something on your end?

What should I do with the Options.ini file once I make it read-only?

@whimsicaltoday  Glad to hear the site is cooperating again.  Make the changes I suggested to Options.ini and then set the file as read-only so the game can't revert those changes.  You don't need to test fullscreen/windowed again, at least not by itself, but read-only is helpful for when you change the resolution.

Separately, I know that formally switching out the cable to the monitor would be a significant undertaking, but can you or a friend or family member get to the plugs on either end?  If so, you could test a different cable without running it behind your furniture (let it dangle temporarily if you have to), which would then tell you whether the problem is the cable itself.  I don't know your exact setup, so I have no idea whether this is feasible even as a temporary measure, but I and the person I asked are starting to run out of ideas if the different resolution doesn't help.

Well, I tried making it read-only. I didn't have to make the changes you suggested because, for some reason, they unreverted and already said what you wanted them to say. When I open the Sims 4, it does the same thing: showing the logos, auto-closing, and bringing up the EA app page. 

My computer is enclosed inside my desk (which is open in the front and closed in the back), with all the wires (together in a bundle) running through a little hole in the (unremovable) back of the desk so they can all connect to a surge protector power strip. To examine the back of the computer, you have to pull the heavy desk out from the surrounding furniture, unhook the wires from the surge protector, blindly pull the entire bundle of wires out of the computer through the hole, then go around to the front of the desk, pull the computer out of the front of the desk and put it on the floor, and turn the computer around. Then you'd have to go to the back of the desk, pull the wires through the hole, unbundle the wires, then figure out which one of the wires goes to the monitor, then switch out the wires for testing purposes. I don't currently have any spare cables or monitors to test with. I would have to buy one. I know nothing about cables or monitors, so I would have to be shown the exact one I'd need to buy. I don't currently have the money to buy it: I would have to save up over time. 

I did take a flashlight and check if the cables are hanging or otherwise being weighed down by anything, and they look fine. From what I can see, everything looks connected okay. And I had everything cleaned of dust just a couple months back.

What I don't understand is, if it is really the cable or the monitor that is the problem, why isn't it causing any other problems? All my other games work now that I figured out how to get my drivers working. The Sims 4 is now the only thing causing issues. If there was something wrong with the cable or monitor, wouldn't other things be acting up too? And I find the timing strange. I've been playing Sims 4 with my current monitor/cables for years with no issue, and was playing the game fine just 3 or 4 weeks ago. The problem started immediately after resetting my PC and having those driver issues. After fixing (I hope) the driver issues, everything else works now except for Sims 4. I find it a weird coincidence that my monitor/cable would start acting up just at that moment. Isn't it more likely there's just still some driver issue or other internal issue that hasn't been fixed yet post-reset?

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.