Sims 4 various crashes

skyzocka  When you say once the game has crashed, every "new start" will result in one of the outcomes you've listed, are you restarting your computer between tests?  Are you using mods or custom content, and if so, does removing the Mods folder change the outcome?  And what error(s) are you seeing when option 4 happens?  I'd like a screenshot or two, or else the full text of the error message.

Please also look for related errors in the Reliability Monitor.  Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes, and you'll see a chart of errors and updates with a column for each day.  Today is on the right.

Look for errors that happened at exactly the time of any Sims 4 crash.  For any you find, double-click it to see more details, then copy that info and paste it into a reply here.  If you don't see new errors, check back in an hour or so—the Reliability Monitor doesn't always update right away.

These crashes would normally be listed in your dxdiag, provided that they weren't crowded out by newer errors.  But your dxdiag lists no WERs at all, which is unusual.  If you use some kind of cleaner app that deletes temp files, it might be deleting this data too, so please disable the app for now.  This info can be extremely helpful, sometimes, in diagnosing the root cause of the crashes.

Hey puzzlezaddict, thank you for response and for trying to help! Let me go through your questions:

puzzlezaddict wrote:

When you say once the game has crashed, every "new start" will result in one of the outcomes you've listed, are you restarting your computer between tests?

A: Excuse me for not being specific here. Every new start of The Sims 4 in an active Windows session was meant here. And the issues 1-5 only occur, if I don't restart my PC after the very first crash (while in the active windows session) and if I then try to play The Sims  4 again.

puzzlezaddict wrote:

Are you using mods or custom content, and if so, does removing the Mods folder change the outcome?

A: Sadly no. I tried playing vanilla and still crashed the game. Since then, I played the game with 2 mods, UI cheats and MC Command Center and nothing changed in the crashing behavior.

puzzlezaddict wrote:

And what error(s) are you seeing when option 4 happens?

A: I will post an error I found online, pretty sure it's the "failed to load" and not "failed to save", as I didn't have problems saving as of now. Maybe it's worth mentioning that this error message is quite rare. The game would rather crash than show me this message. And if it the message appeared, selecting a world often didn't work and sent me back to the worlds screen (See attached jpeg "46485-1543467759.jpeg").

Another thing worth mentioning around this topic is that I searched the error message online and it never found my exact error code.

puzzlezaddict wrote:

Please also look for related errors in the Reliability Monitor.  Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes, and you'll see a chart of errors and updates with a column for each day.  Today is on the right.

A: That is a cool feature I didn't even know about (mind me, I'm a very curious computer guy). I'll leave screenshots for the 20.02.2025, when I played Sims 4 along 3 technical details since I have 3 types of errors in the Reliability Monitor (Note, that it's in German, I'm guessing you're someone used to seeing the technical details tab, which should probably be 1:1 like in english, but to be brief "Nicht mehr funktionsfähig" means "Not working anymore").

RELIABILITY DETAILS FROM THE 20.02.2025
Time           -          Module Error
17:30                  Python
17:52                   Python
17:53                  "unknown"
18:06                 "unknown"
18:07                  Python
(18:11                 msxml6.dll          <------ Don't know if this is Sims 4 related)
18:19                  "TS4_x64.exe"
18:23                  "TS4_x64.exe"
18:23                  "unknown"

Here we have attached: 
1. "reliabilityMonitor.png" as a quick overview of the 20.02.2025
2. "ts4-20.02.1730.png" for the Sims 4 error on the 20th of February at 17:30 (Module: Python error)
3. "ts4-20.02.1753.png" for the Sims 4 error on the 20th of February at 17:53 (Module: "unknown")
4. "ts4-20.02.1819.png" for the Sims 4 error on the 20th of February at 18:19 (Module: "TS4_x64.exe")

(To make this post appear clean and readible, I won't include the other details. But if you want, I can either attach the other details as a picture or just insert them in my next reply).

puzzlezaddict wrote:

If you use some kind of cleaner app that deletes temp files, it might be deleting this data too, so please disable the app for now.

A: I wouldn't know of any cleaner app, that I'd be using, nor have I ever tried to install one.

Alright, I hope I could answer everything to a nice degree, thank you for your help. I hope we can find the issue and let me know if you need anything else!

Hey!

puzzlezaddict wrote:

Since you've already updated your BIOS, try booting into BIOS and disabling CPU Turbo Boost, which would be under Advanced settings and might be called something slightly different;

This here seems to have solved my problem. Do you know an alternative to this and whose problem this really is? I mean most games seem to work normally, so is it really up to EA and Maxis or indeed just Intel?

skyzocka  In my amateur/enthusiast (not professional) opinion, this is the combined fault of Intel and the motherboard manufacturers.  These companies are always trying to squeeze the maximum results out of their performance-tier motherboards, and as a result, they've collectively gotten somewhat carried away with their default overclocking settings.  To be clear, they've been overclocking CPUs for years, for example my 9700K immediately ran at 4841 MHz rather than the stock 4800 turbo speed as soon as I built the system.  But the settings have become more ambitious over the last few years.

This isn't much different in terms of results than when power users play with their CPU overclocking settings, going just past the point of stability and then dialing it back a notch or two.  Only this time, regular users with high-end hardware may have no idea that the system is overclocked to within an inch of its life until they start to investigate their crashes.

This is also partially Intel's fault because Intel sets the standards and could just tell these companies to stop, or demand certain safeguards.  But Intel wants to hold the gaming crown too.

As for why you're not seeing instability in other applications, that's probably just luck: you don't run anything else that's as sensitive, or maybe produces as varied a workload, as Sims 4.  That's not to say the game couldn't be adjusted to prevent this from happening, only that it's not the game's fault per se.  The way it runs should be absolutely fine and not trigger these types of crashes.

You could try some benchmarking software designed to max out the CPU specifically, and see what happens; I would guess you'd get more crashes.  Cinebench is a popular tool but not the only one.

From here, you have a couple options.  One is to wait for a BIOS update that might tone down the Turbo settings to something more reasonable.  Another is to do your own, less-aggressive CPU overclock, if that's your thing or you're interested in learning, using Sims 4 as one of several tests of system stability.  (Fair warning, this is a whole process if you're starting from scratch.)  A third is to say that even without Turbo enabled, your 14900K can still more than handle any game-related load thrown its way, that your GPU, fast as it is, will still be the limiting factor in almost any game out there, and that the actual performance lost will range from negligible to nonexistent, depending on the game.