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puzzlezaddict's avatar
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
4 years ago

Re: The Sims 4 won't launch, and I just reinstalled it

@BunnieFaery  Before you do anything else, please run a complete virus scan.  Your dxdiag contains a number of errors that could be related to a virus, although I'm having trouble confirming what the particular file in question is supposed to be.  Download Malwarebytes (the free version is fine):

https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download

Open it, click Scan > Custom Scan > Configure Scan, check all the boxes both for scans and for your C and D drives, and let it do its job.  This will probably take at least an hour, so you may want to set it to run while you're doing something else.  Let me know what it finds.

Once it's done, restart your computer, then run a couple of basic checsk on your Windows system files:

  • 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

Restart your computer, hit Windows key-i, select Update & Security, and click the button to check for updates.  If any install, restart again afterwards.

If you still can't play, please move your entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop.  When you launch the game, if it launches, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Don't add anything to it yet; just let me know whether you can get far enough to start a new save.

The clean folder may be enough to solve the Sims 4 issue all by itself, but given the errors in your dxdiag, I wanted to mention the possibility of malware as well.

3 Replies

  • BunnieFaery's avatar
    BunnieFaery
    New Rookie
    4 years ago

    Thank you for replying,

    I did the scans for both malware and viruses, both came out clean. I did the other stuff too, it was completed with no errors, the PC had 2 updates pending, so I did that, did a restart. The game is still not opening... I don't know what else to try, nothing worked for some reason. ☹️

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    4 years ago

    @BunnieFaery  What antivirus do you use?  If you're not sure whether you're running a third-party AV, look through the Task Manager's background processes list; you can google the name of anything that you don't recognize and doesn't have a Windows or Intel logo.

    Please also look for any related errors in the Reliability Monitor.  Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes.  You'll see a list of errors and updates, with a column for each day.  (Today is all the way on the right.)

    For any errors from after you ran DISM and sfc that either mention Origin or Sims 4 or that happened at exactly the same time as you tried to launch the game, click "View technical details," then copy the information and paste it into a reply here.  Sometimes the Reliability Monitor doesn't update right away, so if you don't see any related errors, be sure to check back an hour or two.  The timestamp on the initial chart can also be off by up to an hour, so that's not an entirely reliable metric, but the one within the technical details should be accurate.

    By the way, do you not in fact have a discrete graphics card in this computer?  It looks like at least some configurations of this system do include one, but your dxdiag doesn't list any.

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