Sims 4 - Unable to start Initialization error at startup

Thanks to the posters who contributed to solve this problem, thanks again!!!

I'm glad this worked for the rest of you, but I've tried everything from manually deleting the files for both Origin and The Sims 4, to clean booting, hard drive defragmentation, etc.  Everything looks like it's fine from the download of the Origin installer to the downloading of The Sims 4, but when Origin says the download is done, and I can play it, I press play, wait for about a minute, then get the 135dec40:984c6a38:00000077 error.

Did you also clean out your registery ?

OK, this is very important for us to note, crinrict.

When I first encountered this message, I tried manually deleting and re-installing Origin.

Nothing changed.

Then I tried clearing out my registry and deleting the install files, and manually deleting Origin, and started it all from scratch.

Still nothing.

Then I tried a clean boot.

Nothing.

I put TS4 into Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode with administrative rights.

Then something weird happened...  Origin would show the game started, the button greyed out, then it reverted back to the play button.

So I tried it in Vista SP2.  Same thing.

Then I tried removing compatibility, but leaving administrative rights on.

That's when Origin stopped allowing me to press the play button.

So i disabled administrative rights, and at about the same time, two weird things happened.  My video card driver crashed, and Avast! Internet Security stopped working.  I had to delete my drivers with the latest ones, and re-install Avast!, and restart my computer.  When it restarted, Avast! loaded, but had all of its protective services disabled for some unknown reason, and Windows 7 warned me of it.  I had already started Origin and TS4 to try again, and this time it WORKED!! 

So for me, it was 3 issues in 1-  Origin needed re-installing, my drivers were out of date, and my Internet Security/antivirus suite needed to be disabled.

I recommend that everyone try disabling your antivirus/security software at first, then update your drivers, and if that fails, manually delete Origin, TS4 and its registry files, and reinstall Origin and TS4.

Can anyone explain this to a non-tech-savvy person? The only computer game I ever play is the sims. What files am I deleting and am I going to have to download the sims again? After eight hours of downloading it the first time?

First step is to try reinstalling Origin itself.

Go to your control panel to uninstall it. Then reinstall

Delete what folders?

How do I uninstall TS4? I can't find it anywhere...