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ShadowCat56's avatar
ShadowCat56
Rising Newcomer
20 days ago

Screen turning black on launch

I bought and downloaded the City Living and Cottage Living DLCs and now Sims just freezes whenever I open it. It does the intro bit and goes to the loading screen but then just goes black and refuses to close whether through Steam or the x button. It only closes when I end the task on Task Manager. I have no mods and have never even used them. I've uninstalled and reinstalled, restarted my PC and nothing has worked. It did work before I downloaded the DLCs but after I did SIms just stopped working whether I reinstalled any of my DLCs or not. Task Manager is also saying "System Interupt" as well.

3 Replies

  • ShadowCat56​  As a test, please try playing in a clean user folder.  Move the entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents > Electronic Arts and onto your desktop.  When you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  (Your saves and other content will be intact in the folder you've moved but temporarily unread by the game.)  Don't add anything to the new folder yet; just start a new save and see how it runs, that is if you can get that far.

    If you get another crash, please provide a dxdiag.  Click Windows key-R, enter dxdiag in the run box, wait for the scan to finish, click "Save all information," and save the file to your desktop.  From there, you can attach it to a reply using the paper clip (Attachment) icon included with the other formatting buttons.

  • ShadowCat56's avatar
    ShadowCat56
    Rising Newcomer
    20 days ago

    puzzlezaddict​ I've moved the Sims folder out of the EA folder as well as renaming it but for some reason it hasn't made a new Sims folder, at least not one there and not one I've found yet. Even after that though it still has the same problem of not opening and letting me do anything instead just staying stuck on a black screen. I can't even get far enough to change settings. Also here's the dxdiag file

  • ShadowCat56​  If the game hasn't created a new Sims 4 folder in the same location as the one you removed, then you haven't moved the folder it was reading.  It will start writing to the folder as soon as it starts to load.  So that other folder is somewhere.

    If you can't find it, search your computer for Config.log and look for any Sims 4 folder that contains it.  You may find more than one, which is fine; just rename all of them and see where the new Sims 4 folder gets created.

    If this doesn't help, please try forcing the game to launch in windowed mode.  Once you've found the folder the game is reading, open Options.ini inside, search for fullscreen , and set it to 0 (zero).

    If you really can't find that folder, you can force windowed mode in Steam.  Open Sims 4 > Properties > General and add -w under Launch Options.

    If that doesn't help either, unplug your secondary monitor, restart the laptop, and try with only the laptop screen active.