Sims 4 - Crashing with and without mods
This started occurring with the Businesses & Hobbies update. I started getting random crashes and eventually the game became unplayable due to the frequency of crashing. It got to the point where the game would sometimes crash before the main menu and other times it'd crash after 10-15 minutes in a new or previously saved game.
Anything obvious, I have tried. I'm an IT professional so I generally know what to do to fix things like this, but this has gone beyond anything I've seen before. I gave up for a few months and stopped playing, but I've recently updated to the newest patch. I'm using the legitimate version of the game via the EA app and have all of the DLCs.
Obviously, I went through mod troubleshooting using the 50/50 method and I realised it wasn't mods. I renamed my user data folder (documents\electronic arts\the sims 4), reinstalled the game (making sure to clear out the install folder before installing again) and let it create a new user data folder. Same problem on a completely fresh install with no mods or any remnants of my old user data.
Updated graphics drivers (they were out of date, but they're not now). As far as specs go, I have 32 GB RAM, RTX 4070 and i7 14700k as my main components - so obviously this is enough to run the game. Reinstalled and updated graphics drivers. Reinstalled C++ redistributable. Windows updates. DISM and SFC. Installed the game to a different drive. Disabled Nvidia overlay. Launched with DX9 instead of 12. Tried lower graphic settings, capping refresh rate and lowering resolution. Switched between windowed & fullscreen. Nothing has worked. I've ruled out the issue being the EA app as well.
Sometimes I'll get into a saved game for around 10-15 minutes before the game freezes then crashes to the desktop. Sometimes it will crash on the splash screen before the main menu. Sometimes it'll crash whilst in the main menu, it all seems random. Has anyone ever encountered anything like this? This is quite literally the only game that does this, too. Normally with something like this I'd assume it's the game, but no one else seems to be having the problem. The only reasonable thing I can think is that this may be an issue that's come from a recent update and only affecting people with certain hardware?
e6libqcnw8jv Sorry for the late-ish reply; I ran out of time for the forums yesterday. Anyway, most of the WERs in your dxdiag are crashes of the graphics driver, so I'd suggest a clean uninstall (with Display Driver Uninstaller) and reverting to an older driver, maybe the one from mid-March, which seems to have been stable in that Nvidia didn't update it for a while. You're probably familiar with DDU, but in case you're not, or in case someone else reads this:
You can get older drivers here:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/
Choose Game Ready Driver as the Download Type to be able to go back further.
If that doesn't help, this error:
Fault bucket 1396281695001427650, type 4
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0Problem signature:
P1: TS4_x64.exe
P2: 1.116.232.1030
P3: 687073a4
P4: python37_x64.dll
P5: 3.7.150.1013
P6: 67f85748
P7: c0000005
P8: 000000000004423b
P9:
P10:is associated with 13th/14th-gen, i7 or i9, K-series Intel CPUs that the motherboard may overclock by default to the point of instability. The problem setting is called CPU Turbo Boost in most cases (Asus has a slightly different name, I think, but still with Turbo in the name) and is in the BIOS Advanced settings. Sometimes a BIOS update fixes the issue, but when it doesn't, disabling this setting usually addresses it.
As for why only Sims 4 is affected (as far as I know), I have no idea. I know this was a problem for more applications a year ago, to the point that Intel updated the microcode specifically to address it, but why Sims 4 is sometimes still affected is a mystery to me.
And of course your CPU temps spiking to 100 C is a bad thing regardless of why it's happening. I'd be curious to know whether disabling the BIOS setting prevents these spikes entirely or only lowers the peak temperatures.
