Forum Discussion

Hero+

Re: Sims 4 Freezing At 50% In Preparing

@SuprAquaBoy Is your external drive formatted as NTFS? If not, that may be the issue, so please reformat it.

Otherwise, can you install Sims 4 on your internal drive? Even if you don't want to for storage reasons, please try, for testing purposes, if you have the space at all, and let me know whether it works.

If it does work, create a new folder on your external, called whatever you want, and move the Sims 4 program files (what you just installed through the App) to that folder. Make sure the files are no longer on your internal drive, that they were moved rather than copied. The App will now think the game is uninstalled. Tell it to "install" Sims 4 to the location where you moved the files, and it may simply verify the data and finish the install process.

4 Replies

SuprAquaBoy
Seasoned Newcomer
2 years ago
Hey!
My drive is formatted to exFAT as I use this drive on other computers sometimes with different operating systems. I would have installed the game on my main drive, but it has no storage at all. At most, I can get it to 5gb of storage which is definitely not enough from for The Sims 4. Now, I formatted my drive a couple of days ago and it took a full 24 hours. While a few months ago, with the same amount of date, it only took 2 hours. Now, any other game from the EA app works well and can download, it is only The Sims 4 that cannot. Whenever I try to install it, it makes the drive unreadable and unaccusable. It is something with The Sims 4 that is making it stop, but I don't know what.
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
2 years ago
@SuprAquaBoy The drive itself may be at fault then. Do you have another one you can test with? Even if you can only borrow one for a short amount of time, it would still be a useful test.

Please also let me know how much free and total storage is on the drive.
SuprAquaBoy
Seasoned Newcomer
2 years ago
Hi!
The drive is a 256gb flash drive and has around 210gb remaining. I am pretty sure that the drive has a bad sector which is why I formatted it and it took a full 24 hours instead of its usual 2 hours. I don't have any other drives to tests, so I cant see if it will work on another one. I do believe though that the problem is the drive, I just don't know if I should replace it as I bought this one pretty recently. Maybe I should just take a break from The Sims 4 until this is fixed.
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
2 years ago
@SuprAquaBoy I don't know that taking a break would help. The external drive isn't going to fix itself, and your computer's internal drive will always be limited in terms of space. And Sims 4 isn't getting any smaller either.

What you can try is formatting the external as something else, then back to NTFS. This can sometimes help when the drive is struggling to format itself properly. On the other hand, this size of flash drive is cheap, so you might want to replace it rather than hoping it stays in decent working order going forward.