Re: My game keeps crashing without warning

I checked it, but it's empty. I double checked because i might have the option of not showing hidden files, but it's still empty

Now i tried to run the game again, crashed even before i was able to start a game. 

@americovj856  Do you have any apps installed that automatically clean up temp or other files?  That would delete the logs, perhaps before you got a chance to find them.  Please disable any such apps you have, at least for now.

Otherwise, look again in the same location for any files with the .mdmp extension.  If you don't see any, search This PC for *.dmp and *.mdmp (both with the asterisk, then the file extension), and upload any you find that match the time of the last Sims 4 crash.  It's fine if you don't find any; there are ways to make a computer write one if necessary, and if the crashes are the kind that should produce one.

Please also test with a clean user data folder, just to be thorough, and even if you've tried it before.  Move your entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, and when you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Don't add anything to this folder yet; just try to play and see whether it crashes.  Let me know if it does, and how long you can play first.  And please run another dxdiag, so I can see whether the errors have changed.

I was able to find these dmp files, all related to the recent Sims 4 crashes

https://www107.zippyshare.com/v/pkAN443g/file.html

My girlfriend reminded me of something. The crash usually happens on the City Living Expasion. I moved all of the Sims 4 files to the desktop and played the game, base game. Worked fine. As soon as i moved to the expasion, the game crashed.

I asked my girlfriend and she said that all of the crashes happened on the City Living Expasion, which i find extremely odd.

@americovj856  I'm sorry for the late reply.  I can't get the files you uploaded to download, on a couple different computers and OSs.  I think the site you used isn't safe either: the download buttons wanted to open executables and other files that might run on their own if I wasn't paying attention.

Please use Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or some other trusted site.  You should be able to create a free account somewhere.

San Myshuno has a number of issues that aren't present, or aren't as problematic, in other worlds.  Your computer shouldn't be crashing like this though.

Sorry about that. I completely forgot that Drive could be used for this sort of thing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t22GHsYUj5me-DUBTxHFrFa_Z-lsj_Jj/view?usp=sharing

Just to share my "progress"... None whatsoever. Game randomly starts to be slow and suddenly crashes.

@americovj856  All six of the errors in the minidump files are the same: breakpoint errors, which aren't very specific but at least suggest where to start looking.  You've already uninstalled and reinstalled the game, which would be the first step.  The next easy step is to run a couple of basic checks on your Windows system files.  Here's how:

• Hit Windows key-X
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
• Inside the window that appears, copy and paste “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes into the window, and enter
• The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here
• After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key-X again
• Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator)”
• Inside the window, copy and paste “sfc /scannow” without quotes into the window, and enter
• Post the message you receive here

If sfc reports that if found corrupt files and was unable to repair some of them, please let me know, and stop here.  Otherwise, clear Origin's cache:

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

Then restart your computer, and update Sims 4 if you haven't already, then repair for good measure.  Try to play, again in a clean folder, and play in San Myshuno or whatever the circumstances are where you've been seeing crashing.  If you happen to notice a pattern to what's going on in-game before the crashes, great, but don't worry too much about it.

The next step would be to update or (more likely) clean uninstall and reinstall the drivers for your graphics cards, using the most updated versions from the HP website.  Without your computer in front of me, I can't be sure I'm looking at the correct download page—HP makes it difficult to find that page, and it's not a good idea to guess.  So please go here:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/laptops

Enter the serial number for your laptop, select your OS if necessary, and you'll land on the driver download page for your laptop.  Please link it here.  The download page doesn't contain any information about your specific computer, just the model.  I'll double-check all your drivers and post instructions for a clean uninstall and reinstall of the GPU drivers, if there aren't newer ones ready to install, which there may not be given how recent your current drivers are.

Even though City Living content has its issues, it shouldn't be causing Sims 4 to crash repeatedly as you've described, at least not on your laptop.  The problem that directly causes the crashes may be triggered by something related to CL, but the point is that under normal circumstances, the game would recover, so to speak, or else produce some smaller glitch that didn't result in a crash.  So CL content is probably just presenting the circumstances that reveal a system issue, not the extent of the issue itself.

I did everything you said up until drive update. Here are the results.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Got to 100% and showed no error

sfc /scannow

Showed me the menu that you can see in the attatchment

The rest i did exactly what you wrote. Bad news? it crashed 3 minutes after getting on CL (didn't try on main game). The good news? at least showed me a message, that you can see in the attachment as well.

Forgot to add the HP thing. Here's my laptop

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-pavilion-gaming-15-ec0000-laptop-pc-series/29322788/model/33646453?sku=7VZ35EA

And man, if nothing works, at least you went above and beyond to help out, and i really appreciate it.

@americovj856  I'm not ready to give up yet, and if I run out of ideas, I'll ask for a second opinion.

The error in your second screenshot is of the same kind as the ones in the crash dumps, which is good confirmation if not really surprising.  The sfc messages you saw are because there was an extra space after the slash ( sfc / scannow instead of sfc /scannow ), so it didn't run.

If sfc doesn't fix the issue, please run any pending Windows updates: hit Windows key-i, select Update & Security, click the button to check for updates, and download any listed.  Please also see whether Windows offers you the option to update to build 2004, the May 2020 update.  I'm not saying you should definitely update at this point, but it's worth considering if other options don't work.  So let me know whether you can in fact install it (Windows is blocking the update for some people until certain bugs are addressed) and whether you'd be willing to do so.

There is in fact a new driver for your integrated graphics chip, but the driver for your Nvidia card is newer than the newest HP version.  Still, if sfc and running updates don't help, doing a clean uninstall and reinstall of the drivers is a reasonable next step.  You can always manually update the Nvidia driver later if you want.  But try the other steps first, because this could very well be unrelated to the GPU drivers, and as long as they're working properly, there's no reason to replace them.

Well, as you can see from the screenshot, sfc gave me no errors.

There was an update for me to do, regarding the AMD chip, which i did, and after that, i was able to play the game about an hour or so until the game crashed, without warning and no slowdowns whatsoever while i was on the City Living expansion. So i decided to dig deeper, and went to the NVIDIA website, found my graphics card and updated it to a more recent build.

I decided to try the game again so i loaded the previous save and as soon as i did, the game crashed. Thinking that i was because of the NVIDIA update, i decided to try a different game, Arkham City, and it ran fine without crashing or any sort of slowdowns or errors.

As for the 2004 build, it indeed shows me that an update is coming soon, but for now it doesn't let me install it.

EDIT: I decided to try the game 2/3 times, i loaded the previous save and the game crashed as soon as it loaded the previous saves on the City Living expansion

@americovj856  Okay, I do think a clean uninstall of both graphics drivers is the next step.  (And the person who I asked for a second opinion thinks so too, which makes me feel better about it.)  Download Display Driver Uninstaller from here:

https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3183

Go back to the HP driver download page, and download the AMD and Nvidia graphics drivers from November 15; both are listed as Rev. B.  It's better to use these two, as they're made to work with each other and in your current Windows build.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-pavilion-gaming-15-ec0000-laptop-pc-series/29322788/model/33646453?sku=7VZ35EA

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 and then paste it into the address bar in a File Explorer window.  Open the folder and then launch 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; make sure the box in red is checked:

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:

In the blue box, choose GPU, then Nvidia if it's not already showing.  Then click Clean and Restart (red box).

The computer will reboot, and then you'll need to repeat the process, this time selecting AMD (rather than Nviida) in the blue box above.

Once your computer has rebooted, now back in normal mode, run the AMD driver install .exe first, and restart manually, then install the Nvidia driver.

Reboot again, go back online, and see whether the game works normally.  If not, let me know.

In the middle of doing what you told me, i hit a roadbump.

As i was trying to install both AMD and NVIDIA REV B of 15 November, both gave me the error posted here.

@americovj856  That's a bit odd.  Although you're on build 1903 rather than 1909 (the build the drivers were made for), the two are qutie similar, and software for one almost always works for the other.  But there may be something built into the HP software that blocks it anyway.

At any rate, try the drivers from September 12 (rev. A).  They're not so old that they shouldn't work at all, although the ones from November would be better.

I guess an update is in order, and since it's been 3 days since the last one, i feel more confortable talking about it.

Ever since i unninstalled the drivers, the PC installed the original ones i had before i updated them, and since then, there's been 1 or 2 crashes after about maybe, 5/ 6 hours worth of gameplay on City Living, with mods galore thrown into it. 

Probably the drivers weren't installed properly or something of the sort, which is weird since other games worked, but i guess Sims is more sensitive.

@americovj856  City Living has plenty of issues, so a crash after playing for a few hours is probably not such a bad outcome.  Still, if you'd like to double-check that the crashes are innocuous, or troubleshoot further in general, please let me know.

Well... after some troubleshooting and countless uninstall/installing different drives, i don't know what else to do. Since it started crashing again, i decided to do the same thing, but this time i downloaded the drives you recomended the 2nd time. After a day or so, the game started crashing, again, without any explanation.

Forgot to add that this time, it's not on City Living this time, it's in Sulani... I guess EA doesn't want me to buy expansion packs

@americovj856  Please uninstall all the VC++ runtimes on your system.  Hit Windows key-i, select Apps, scroll down to the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables, click on each one, and Uninstall.  Then restart your computer, and download and install the All in One Runtimes package from this page:

https://www.sereby.org/site/downloads/All%20in%20One%20Runtimes

(The download is free; you don't have to donate anything.)  This is a guide, so you know what you're getting, but the download linked at the bottom won't work in Windows 10.

https://www.sereby.org/site/All%20in%20One%20Runtimes&lang=en

Restart again, and test the game.  If it doesn't work, please try playing in a clean boot.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10

In the clean boot, don't open anything aside from Origin and Sims 4, and disable your antivirus/firewall before you play.  It's also a good idea to go through the Task Manager and shut down any apps that are still running, because a few of them are somehow not disabled in a clean boot.

If that doesn't help either, the next step would be hardware monitoring.  Download hwinfo from here:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

You don't need to install anything if you don't want to; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you want.  (If you would like to install, be sure to click the green button, not the orange one.)  Restart your computer, and don't open any other apps.  Launch hwinfo, choose "sensors only," and click the icon that's a sheet of paper with a + sign to start logging.  Save the file to your desktop for easy access later.

Wait five minutes, then launch Sims 4 and play until it crashes.  You can click the same button to end logging.  Upload the log to a third-party free filehosting site and link it here.  Please leave it in .csv format, or if you use OneDrive to share, please compress it in .zip format instead.