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SugaKookies44's avatar
SugaKookies44
New Rookie
2 years ago
Solved

The Sims 4 will not Open :(

Hello Answer HQ! I've been having an issue with launching my game these past few days, and even after all my googling, I cannot seem to find something that will solve my issue. So now here I am asking for myself.

As of Friday (today, while writing, is Sunday) my game simply will not open. I literally cannot imagine why. Thursday afternoon I played just fine, everything ran like it typically does and I shut it down just like I always do (save and exit, shut off my PC), no funny business. Friday morning I downloaded some new CC, put it all in the folders and what do you know, my game will not open. Through either Steam (my usual launch) or directly the EA App, the game will start to run, and the "Preparing Game" bar will pop up and then disappear. And nothing happens. Just because of the age of my computer, I'm used to it doing that and then taking a bit to start but it has never taken more than maybe a minute to a minute & a half. However, even if I wait around 5-10 minutes nothing happens!

So, just a bit ago, I thought well. Geez it only started happening after some new custom content so let's see. I went through and took out all the CC that had not been in my game prior to this happening and put it on my desktop. I hoped there would be an issue and that I'd just have to go through the boring task of weeding out the problem. However, it has persisted. I'm going to try once more to take out all the items I hadn't used yet and see if leaving it long enough does anything. I might scream if I have to find a way to take everything out of the Mods folder to check.

(I've got rather low disk space and my computer doesn't enjoy it when I try moving mass amounts of files around to new locations where they don't fit. That's the only reason I haven't done that yet)

Thank you, and happy New Year if you're seeing this after today!

  • SugaKookies44's avatar
    SugaKookies44
    2 years ago
    @puzzlezaddict decided to do some splitting of the mods and found the problem! game is running and business is as usual again. don't know why i didn't do this to begin with haha i've just been taking all of them out and back in at once

5 Replies

  • @SugaKookies44  As a test, please try playing in a clean user folder.  Move the entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents > Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, and when you launch the game, if it launches, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  (Your saves and other content will be intact in the folder you moved but temporarily not read by the game.)  Don't add anything to the new folder yet; just let me know whether you can get far enough to start a new save and play in live mode for a bit.

    If that doesn't help, please run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

    https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

    If you prefer not to move the Sims 4 folder, you can rename it instead.  This accomplishes the same thing: the game won't be able to find the folder and will create a new one with no content.

  • SugaKookies44's avatar
    SugaKookies44
    New Rookie
    2 years ago

    Hi, I wasn't able to get either of these; I don't have the space to move the folder and whenever I try to rename it, it says the folder or a file is open in another program.

  • SugaKookies44's avatar
    SugaKookies44
    New Rookie
    2 years ago
    @puzzlezaddict decided to do some splitting of the mods and found the problem! game is running and business is as usual again. don't know why i didn't do this to begin with haha i've just been taking all of them out and back in at once
  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @SugaKookies44  I'm glad you figured it out.  In the future, if you get that same error when trying to rename the Sims 4 folder, you can restart your computer and try again, and make sure the game and the EA App are closed.  And also make sure that you're working with the Sims 4 user folder in Documents, not the one that contains the game's program files—the EABackgroundService would prevent you from renaming it, and it shouldn't be renamed or moved anyway.