I'm really hoping I can get some sort of help here because my game is completely unplayable because of this and has been for quite some time. During unspecified amounts of play time Sims 4 will alwa...
@rokelle2012 Sorry for the late reply; I wanted to get a second opinion on whether there was anything else you could do here. This issue isn't about Sims 4 or any other games. Your hard drive is failing. The new chkdsk scan flagged far more bad sectors as the first one, and it still reports that there's not enough space to replace them. Either of these is enough to say the drive is in bad shape; both means it's time for a replacement, the sooner the better. While your drive might continue to function for a while, it could also fail at any moment, at which point your data could be totally unrecoverable.
If you have a warranty, this is the time to use it. I'm not sure why this drive failed so quickly, but that should never happen and just reinforces the idea that there's something very wrong with the drive.
Alright, so after playing in a new user folder as suggested I have found out something interesting. My game does not freeze my computer if the game is in CAS, only outside of CAS. I had the new save up for several hours in CAS with no freezing whatsoever and it had frozen within minutes me moving the test sim into a lot.
Included is my dxdiag file. Not really sure what is going on with my game but I would very much like to be able to actually play rather than just being stuck in CAS the whole time.
@rokelle2012 As an(other) experiment, try playing while your computer is completely offline. You can sign into Origin and put it in offline mode, then disable wifi and/or unplug the ethernet cable before launching the game.
If that doesn't make a difference, please run a couple of basic checks of your Windows system files. Here's how:
Hit Windows key-X
Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
Inside the window that appears, copy and paste “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes into the window, and enter
The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here
After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key-X again
Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator)”
Inside the window, copy and paste “sfc /scannow” without quotes into the window, and enter
Post the message you receive here
Restart before trying to play.
If that doesn't help, try doing a clean uninstall and reinstall of the Nvidia graphics driver. You don't have to disable the driver; the point is to have a completely fresh copy. Download Display Driver Uninstaller from here:
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 launch 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; make sure the box in red is checked:
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:
In the blue box, choose GPU, then Nvidia if it's not already showing. Then click Clean and Restart (red box).
Once your computer has rebooted, now back in normal mode, run the driver install .exe in custom mode. Select "perform a clean installation" and install ONLY the GPU driver and the PHYSX software.
Reboot again, go back online, and see whether the game works normally. If not, let me know.
Alright, I did the first two system checks and these are my results:
For the first one it did encounter an error that stated, "The WOF driver encountered a corruption in the compressed file's Resource Table". The check reached about 50-55% before giving me this error.
For the second check, the message I got was, "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations".
I am about the go ahead and restart my computer and then go ahead with the uninstallation and reinstallation of the Nvidia drivers, unless you believe there is something else I should do based on the error above.
*edit: I went ahead and included a copy of the log file from the first error. Don't know if it is needed but thought it might be important.
@rokelle2012 Interesting errors. You can try the clean uninstall and reinstall of the Nvidia driver if you want; there's a reasonable chance that the DISM error is irrelevant to the driver or to Sims 4. If the issue is just with the component store and Windows 10 itself doesn't need repairing, then the problem isn't critical, and it should be resolved with the next Windows feature update. But you don't know that nothing about Windows needs repairing until your game works again, along with everything else of course.
If you need or want to address the DISM error itself, the best approach is to do a repair install or a feature update of Windows 10. The question then becomes whether you want to stay on your current Windows build or would be fine updating to the newest one.
If you don't mind updating, open this site in Edge (yes, Edge):
and click the button at the top of the screen to force an update.
Doing a repair install is also a viable option, but doing one with your current build of Windows rather than the newest one would require tracking down an ISO of that build. Let me know if you want to go this route, and I'll see if I can find a legitimate one.
Wanted to give a quick update as I know I haven't responded in a bit. I went ahead and decided to try uninstalling my current graphics drivers and doing a fresh install.
It was mentioned I needed my password, no big deal, I have that memorized. Well, it was actually a huge deal because what I didn't realize was my Microsoft account password would not work as there was no internet connection.
Safe to say I very much bricked my computer as I did not have an actual password for the computer itself, I always signed in via pincode or my Microsoft account.
So now we are installing windows updates again after I finally managed to completely wipe my hdsd and re-install windows again.
Upon reinstall of the network drivers, the computer went online and found the rest of the needed drivers including the Nvidia driver. GeForce experience is not currently installed, just the driver.
I shall try my game again once my computer is fully updated and I have put all of my backed up files back onto the computer from One Drive.
@rokelle2012 I'm sorry to hear that happened to you. Please let me know if you have any more trouble playing Sims 4, and if so, please run a new dxdiag so I can see the current status of your computer.
Well, I thought this new and fresh install of Windows 10 and my graphics drivers did the trick but that was wishful thinking. I am able to play in CAS for as long as I wish it seems and if I have a sim in an empty lot it also never seems to freeze as well.
As soon as I load into a fully furnished lot, within 10-20 minutes it freezes my whole computer again without fail. I have ran another dxdiag file and have included it here.
I honestly have no idea why this is happening. Is it possible one of the packs is simply not getting along with my computer? I suppose I could try playing in a brand new save after uninstalling all packs and adding them back in one by one to see if there is a change.
@rokelle2012 If you wanted to test your theory, rather than uninstalling and reinstalling your packs, you could disable them in Origin, then reenable a few at a time.
However, I don't think this has to do with your packs, or perhaps even your game at all. Your new dxdiag lists a number of BlueScreens related to memory management, in this case the page file. So you could have a problem with a RAM module or with your hard drive. I'd start by checking the hard drive:
Hit Windows key-X
Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
Inside the window that appears, copy and paste "chkdsk /f /r c:" without quotes, and enter
You'll be asked to allow a restart; say yes
When the scan is done, use this guide to find the results
Testing RAM is more complicated and time-consuming, especially if you have four modules. The most thorough approach is to use MemTest86 and test each module separately in at least two different slots. MemTest86 is free, although you will need a USB stick you don't mind erasing.
By the way, your Nvidia graphics driver is more than a year out of date. There's no indication in your dxdiag that the driver is causing errors, and it's compatible with your current Windows build, so I don't think you necessarily need to update it now, especially given the other problems you're seeing. But it's something to keep in mind for later. You can always find the newest driver by selecting your card on this page:
Ah, I was not aware that the drivers were out of date. Windows automatically found drivers online once it was connected to the internet again after the install. I'm not surprised in the least it didn't find the most updated drivers.
With that being said I'll follow the steps below to check my hdsd and my ram and then get back to you. Really hoping it's the ram because that is a much easier fix than the hdsd. Really don't want to have to completely reinstall windows again if I don't have to.
I'll perform the tests and check back in later.
*edit: I have performed the check of the hdsd and this is the txt file for that check.
@rokelle2012 Interestingly, you might have been onto something with the idea that one of your Sims 4 packs was causing an issue. Chkdsk flagged some bad clusters, including ones that store data from EP04 (Cats & Dogs), although the issue is where the pack data is stored on the drive, not anything to do with the pack itself.
Let me get back to you on that, and if you have time to run MemTest86 before I do, let me know how it goes.
Edit: I asked someone who knows more than I do. It's possible that chkdsk did in fact replace the bad sectors, but it's better to check yourself. You can use SeaTools, which is made by Seagate. The "SeaTools for Windows" version is fine:
Use the Fix All > Long option. This may be able to remap bad sectors and therefore fix the issue in the short term. However, if there are more than a handful of bad sectors (maybe ten), that can mean that the drive is starting to fail. In that case, it's probably time to replace it, since a complete failure would mean losing all your data.
@rokelle2012 On second thought, try running the SeaTools Short Drive Self Test first, and see what it reports. Then we can go from there. Please also let me know whether Long Drive Self Test is an option; the documentation is conflicting on that point
Finished up with Memtest just moments ago and all four sticks of ram are good. I'm in the process of running the short drive self test right now.
Actually, the short test passed while I was in the middle of typing this so that is finished as well.
There was not a long drive test option, but a long generic option.
I am going to go ahead and run that test on the drive and see how it goes.
*edit: The long test finally finished and the hdsd passed that test as well, so I would suppose whatever was wrong got fixed during the check disk operation earlier. I'm going to try to play my game some tonight and see if it makes my computer freeze up again.
** edit: Sims 4 is still freezing up the whole computer. It took much longer now, several hours at least. I didn't keep a timer on it. I played around with it for over an hour, saved, and then got up to do other things and when I went back to the computer and it was frozen.
@rokelle2012 Sorry, I didn't see your most recent edit until now. Please run chkdsk again and post the results. I'd like to see whether anything has changed, for better or for worse, between the last chkdsk and this one.
@rokelle2012 Sorry for the late reply; I wanted to get a second opinion on whether there was anything else you could do here. This issue isn't about Sims 4 or any other games. Your hard drive is failing. The new chkdsk scan flagged far more bad sectors as the first one, and it still reports that there's not enough space to replace them. Either of these is enough to say the drive is in bad shape; both means it's time for a replacement, the sooner the better. While your drive might continue to function for a while, it could also fail at any moment, at which point your data could be totally unrecoverable.
If you have a warranty, this is the time to use it. I'm not sure why this drive failed so quickly, but that should never happen and just reinforces the idea that there's something very wrong with the drive.
I actually already checked to see if it was under warranty still and it wasn't. Ah, well. I was hoping it could wait until I did my big pc upgrade in Feb-March but looks like I'll have to replace it asap.
Thanks for looking into everything for me. Really sucks that once again my problem is a hardware issue, again.
I'll look into getting a replacement for it then. Guess I could always just use it for extra storage when I do build my new computer.
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