@ITurner_Anzac You certainly don't need to apologize for having such a strange issue. And you definitely shouldn't have to let the game load for hours and leave it running indefinitely; that would also not be great for the health of either your saves or your system overall, although in the short-term it would probably be fine.
Try playing in a new user account on your computer. Make it an admin account, and be sure to use only letters and numbers in the username, no special symbols, accents, etc. You shouldn't have to redownload Origin or your game, although your saves and other content won't be accessible. (You can move them over later if this helps, but leave that for now.) If you get the same delays in the new user account—you really only need to wait a few minutes, not hours, to see whether this helps—please go the clean boot/no internet route again, just to see whether it helps.
@puzzlezaddict aha finally something worked!! The game loads fine on a new admin account, so there must be something up with my personal account. I played a bit and made some test sims, saved, closed reopened and it works fine and loads within about 5 seconds. But if I switch back to my own account it just sits there. Very strange!!
@ITurner_Anzac It's definitely strange, but permissions can get broken and other data corrupted, often for no identifiable reason. If you want to keep trying to fix your current account, let me know, but you could also just use the new account instead.
One common cause of an admin account not running a game is a nonstandard character (a special symbol, an accent, etc.) in the username. So if your username has one, you can try changing it; that would be an easy fix. Otherwise, it can be a bit more difficult to find the root cause.
@puzzlezaddict I am quite ok using another account, not a problem as I think otherwise it will continue to be a headache!! I'm wondering if it's because I set up my PC with my old hotmail account which is now outlook live, so my account name is my email address even though it just says my name when I login. Who nows?!
Thank you so so much for all your help with this, I will know what to do if anything like this happens again! :D
*knows not nows!! Dear oh dear...
@ITurner_Anzac It's possible the @ in your account name is causing this trouble, although I don't know why it would be a problem some of the time but not otherwise. Origin can be weird like that.
@ITurner_Anzac wrote:
*knows not nows!! Dear oh dear...
We've all been there. You can also edit a post by clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner.
Doh! :-P
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