Re: Sims 4 crashing my computer

@vivas2001  Thanks for the dxdiag, which lists several serious crashes of the graphics driver.  So it's a good idea to clean-uninstall and reinstall the driver, as described here:

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

You can get a fresh copy of the newest Nvidia driver here:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/216928/en-us/

Please also run a Windows search for mpns.exe, which crashed a couple times as well.  Looking it up, I see that multiple applications use the same name.  One is a component of Windows and perfectly save, but it also doesn't crash often; another may be malware.  The idea here is to find out how many copies you have on your system and where they're located.  I'm not saying your computer has a virus, only that it's worth checking.

Open a File Explorer window, click This PC in the left panel, and enter mpns in the search bar in the upper-right corner.  When the scan finishes, expand the window sideways so you can see the fuill file path for each entry, and post a screenshot if you want me to take a look.  If the Windows search is unhelpful, you can use Everything, from VoidTools, instead: it's a much more effective search.  But if you prefer not to install anything, the Windows search is probably good enough.

Hi @puzzlezaddict . Thank you very much for your help! I really appreciate it. 🙂

I tried your proposed idea of cleaning, uninstalling and reinstalling the driver, but unfortunately it did not work, it still crashed.

After that, searching mpns gave me new hope, because the route was showing some error through System Mechanic application. So my partner helped me disable all the options of System Mechanic that could possibly cause the crash and shut down of my PC. It worked at first, I tried out several households, so I thought the issue is solved and I added back my old save file. Played a littlebit and I risked playing with the Laurents. Well it crashed again..

Now I am after a full clean,delete and reinstallation of Windows. With a new file it seemed to work, for approx 1 hour, but I will try to play with that.

I am afraid to test it with the old save file, even tho I really really want to have that... Do you think it's possible that the save file is causing the issue (even tho new files before were also crashing especially with that household)? I don't understand what is wrong, before the last patch I never had problems like this and it is only happening with the Sims 4.

@vivas2001  It's possible that the old save is corrupted to some extent.  It's also possible you're seeing more than one issue.  For the new crash, did you add any sims or lots to it, either from your own library or from the Gallery, or did you start fresh with no existing content?

I'd like to see some info from the newest crash as well.  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 an error that happened at exactly the time of your most recent Sims 4 crash.  If you find one, double-click it to see more details, then copy that info and paste it into a reply here.  If you don't see a new error, check back in an hour or so—the Reliability Monitor doesn't always update right away.

@puzzlezaddict Thank you for the advice.

So after cleaning the PC, unistalling Windows and reinstalling, I thought it's  windows that is causing this issue. I have nothing else (game) but the Sims 4 on the PC. I've let the game run for about 1 hour and it was all fine, I did not download anything from gallery or anything, I let a default household run the game.

20 minutes ago I pasted back my old save file, it worked for 30 minutes, then I travelled to another lot with my Sim and it crashed again. Well at least now I have a new dxDiag file with the new Windows..

The search with the perfmon /rel indicated a hardware malfunction: LiveKernelEvent, 141, and something with WATCHDOG. I have attached a screenshot of it, do you maybe know what is this error?

@vivas2001  LiveKernelEvent 141 is the same error as I mentioned before.  Specifically, it's a video driver timeout: Windows detects that the driver hasn't responded in a timely fashion, it attempts to recover the driver, and if that doesn't work, it shuts it down.  This error should never happen under normal circumstances and especially not after clean-uninstalling and reinstalling the driver.

Just in case this isn't about the driver itself, but rather some kind of conflict, please try playing in a clean boot:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

The one service to leave enabled is the EABackgroundService, which the EA App needs in order to run.  Disable the rest as described.

When you reboot your computer, go through the Task Manager's background processes list shutting down any service that doesn't absolutely need to be running, for example anything from MSI Afterburner to RGB software might still be enabled.  If you accidentally kill a critical process and it doesn't restart on its own, just reboot your computer again.

Don't open anything other than Sims 4 and the EA App while testing, not even a browser window.

If that doesn't help, it's worth running a couple of GPU benchmarks.  You can download the free trial of 3DMark from Steam and run Time Spy and Firestrike.  I would run each one once and get the results pages, which you can do without an account; feel free to post the links here.  Then run Time Spy four times, back to back with no pause in between, and let me know how it goes.

Hey @puzzlezaddict . So I wanted to do the the check with only the EAbackgroundService, but after I followed rhe description and disabled everything except the EA, I rebooted but I could not enter to my computer becase the windows process that deals with pin code has been disabled as well😂 and restart did not work, so I had to reinstall windows.

BUT, here comes the shocker! (check the attached picture🥲)

Probably it was caused due to the plugs not being firmly tightly connected. 🤦🏽‍♀️

I will have a new cable on Wednesday. Do you think that this could be the reason for the crash? Or is it possible that the crash caused the burn and there is another underlying issue?  

@vivas2001  That burned cable could absolutely be the reason for all the crashing.  It could have happened because the cable wasn't inserted properly or for some other reason; it's difficult to tell without more disassembly than most regular users want to try.  For now, just make sure the new cable is properly plugged in, and check it after each of the first few play sessions.

When you clean boot, you need your password, not your PIN.  Every Windows account has a password, even if you don't know it; it might be the same as your Microsoft account's password.