Re: Unable to start: The Sims 4 is already running

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately none of this worked for me. I’m not sure where the error is coming from. 

This worked! Thank you so much! Does it have to do with my one drive or something? Also for the files I’m assuming I can just save to an external drive and transfer them over to the new account?

@Mariposa0722  The issue could be related to OneDrive, or the Documents folder (or a subfolder) in your older Windows account could have borked permissions.  It can be difficult to figure out the cause at times, but the new account bypasses the problem.

You don't actually need an external drive.  If you open a File Explorer window and click This PC, then Users, you'll see a Public folder.  This is accessible from any Windows account on your computer.  Just drop the files you want to transfer into that folder, then login to the new account and grab them from there.

Thank you! I appreciate your help with this!!

Hi, I had a similar problem where the game was running in the background, but would not open. I had copied the Folder that was in documents (Electronic Arts -> The Sims 4) into the desktop. So when I opened Sims 4 it made a new folder in the documents. To get my mods and save files back, I had to copy the files back into the Documents folder ("C:\Users\User_name\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4"). Then when I launched the game I had my progress and my mods.

How does this work?  If you can't save your game progress, then what's the point?  Thanks for any help.

@SonestaLee and anyone else seeing the "already running" error, please see the first post of this master thread:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/CURRENT-ISSUE-Sims-4-already-running/m-p/13276380

Since this thread is a bit old now, I'll lock it here.