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bethanyjbee's avatar
6 years ago

Sims 4 Black Screen with cursor and music

I feel like I've tried everything by this point so I'm turning to the fourms for help after getting nowhere with the online chat service.

Each time I load up my Sims 4 game I just get a black screen with the sims cursor and the music playing - nothing else happens.

I've tried:

Opening in windowed mode

Changing it to 32bit

Making sure it's running off the right graphics settings
Turned off Origin in-game mode

Re-installed both Origin and the whole game

Clean booting my laptop

Repairing the game

All my drivers are up to date

Clearing the cache

I have no mods installed because it was a clean install right from the beginning

Checked the firewall etc and permissions

I'm not quite sure what else to try! Any help is great!

7 Replies

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    6 years ago

    @bethanyjbee  Your drivers may be up to date, but your graphics driver is seven years old, older than both Sims 4 and Windows 10.  It's not certain that this particular driver is the problem, but it's a good place to start.

    Even Intel doesn't have a Windows 10 driver for your particular card that's listed as compatible for Windows 10.  So the best approach is to let Windows find a new driver for your card.  First, do a clean uninstall of the old driver.  Here's how:

    First, download Display Driver Uninstaller from here:

    https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2351

    Next, take your computer completely offline—disable wifi and/or pull the ethernet cord—and double-click the DDU.exe.  Take note of where the file will land, and click Extract.  If it's easier, you can copy the path and then paste it into the address bar in a File Explorer window.  Open the folder and then Display Driver Uninstaller.exe, and you'll get a message that you're not in Safe Mode.  Click OK, then go to Options and enable Safe Mode dialog.  Here's a screenshot of what your options should look like:

    Close options, and the DDU, and then open the DDU.exe again.  For launch options, choose "Safe Mode (Recommended)," and then click Reboot to Safe Mode (you'll need your password, so find it before rebooting).  Once you login, you'll see this:



    Choose GPU in the dropdown menu (step one), then Intel (step 2) if it's not already showing.  Then click Clean and Restart (step 3).

    Once your computer has rebooted, now back in normal mode, go online again.  Intel doesn't offer a Windows 10-compatible driver for your graphics chip, but Windows itself should find one for you.  Test the game a couple of times, and let me know whether it works.

  • bethanyjbee's avatar
    bethanyjbee
    6 years ago

    I followed the steps and got as far as the first restart and now my laptop won’t boot up at all. Any ideas?

  • There was no error messages but I've now had to factory reset my laptop after trying to follow the last step so I guess I'll try fresh from there

  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    6 years ago

    @bethanyjbee 


    Hildandia  schrieb:

    There was no error messages but I've now had to factory reset my laptop after trying to follow the last step so I guess I'll try fresh from there


    What is strange, because DDUing a Graphic driver is normally a pretty save process.

    This may or my not indicate deeper lying problems on your notebook.

    Anyway, this should be a "HP Pavilion dv6-6b55sg" (The exact model is not easy to verify, there is no specific info in the DxDiag)


    If I am wrong, please tell us the exact model name of your notebook.

    After the factory reset, you should be back at Windows 7 now, correct?

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