Forum Discussion

Chloe_isboss12's avatar
11 months ago

Trouble Downloading The Sims 4 on Flash Drive

 

I’m experiencing an issue trying to download The Sims 4 onto a flash drive. My computer doesn’t have enough storage, so I purchased a flash drive to use for the installation.

Previously, I had The Sims 4 installed on my old computer, which was a gaming computer, and it worked perfectly. However, now, when I attempt to download the game to the flash drive, it gets stuck during the “Preparing” stage and stays at 2%.

I’ve tried several troubleshooting steps:

  1. Stopping and restarting the download.
  2. Leaving the app open for an extended period (I left it running for 7 hours while at work, but it was still stuck at 2% when I returned).

Unfortunately, nothing has worked, and I’m not sure how to resolve this issue. I would greatly appreciate your assistance in figuring out why the download is stuck and what I can do to fix it.

Thank you for your time and support.



1 Reply

  • Chloe_isboss12  Try manually uninstalling and reinstalling the 2022 VC++ runtimes, which Sims 4 and the EA App both use.  Hit Windows key-i, select Apps, scroll down to the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables, click on any version from 2015 or later, and select Uninstall.  Don't touch the older versions.  You can download the newest runtimes directly from Microsoft:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170

    You'll need both the x86 and x64 versions of the 2015-2022 runtimes, but you can skip the ARM version, which is for a different class of device.  Restart your computer after installing the runtimes and before trying to install Sims 4 again.

    If that doesn't help, how is your USB formatted?  You can check by clicking Windows key-X and selecting Disk Utility.  If it's FAT32 or exFAT, try formatting it as NTFS instead.  This will erase the drive, so move anything you want to preserve elsewhere first.