Sims 4 not running

I see. Just to double check, it's never run on your machine before?

If, after a failed attempt to run the game, is there a TS4.exe process within the task manager.

It has never run before (but CAS and all other origin games have never had issues, they run fine). 

There is no TS4.exe process within task manager 

While attempting to run the game with task manager open - I see a background process with the EA green logo (activationui.exe) pop up for a VERY brief second, and then quickly close, and nothing happens after. 

I see. Just to check, you don't use any proxies or VPNs to bypass the region check (we generally won't make a fuss about it, but it can lead to issues)?

Does setting the activationui.exe to run as admin have any effect? Its location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 4\Game\Bin\Core

I do have a VPN program on my PC but it's disabled at the moment (I live in Canada, so I should be just fine for region check purposes) 

Setting ActivationUI (32) to run as admin had no effect. 

I also added it as an exception to windows defender / disabled my firewall temporarily, with no effect. 

Thanks for the extra info.

As I suspect that the issue is related to activationui, for the next step I'll sk you to restart your machine in Safe Mode with Networking. Despite being explicitly told not to block the game or activationui, sometimes security software can be overzealous, and a Safe Mode boot can help get around/check for this.

The game won't actually run in this mode (and your desktop will look hideous), but ideally it will make it a bit further before failing.

Alrighty - entered safemode with networking, attempted to load - and had the same issue with the process starting and quitting right away - BUT - I did get TS4 to also briefly show up there for a split second as a background process. Neither program went any further in safemode. Because TS4 doesn't show up at all when not in safemode, I'll take this as progress? 🙂 

Ok then, hopefully that made the progress I want. Restart your machine in normal mode, then without turning on Origin (or just set it to offline mode) try to launch the game from the Windows folder mentioned earlier.

Back to not working. When I went offline in origin and attempted to play it asked me to enter my email / pw and validate the game - I did so, and went no further with playing. When attempting to play it again the acti background process shows up - but no TS4 process. 

Side note - upon trying to duplicate this process it no longer asks me to enter my information to validate the game when in offline mode, it just replicates the initial problem of not starting. 

Thanks. It's worth double checking your whitelists for your security software, just in case any could be blocking activationui.

Is there now a reliability monitor crash for ts4.exe (from the Safe Mode startup)?

Sorry for interjecting, but I use VPN, does that contribute to my "Unable to connect to EA servers to activate Sims 4?"