Re: The sims castaway stories windows 10

@mate54 i haven't done that actually.. i thought it was needed to run the game full stop? ill try without it 🙂

didn't work... came up with same message :/ is there anything else you could think of that I could try?

@15blythm Yes, there's a couple other things that might work.

Please go to Documents\Electronic Arts and move The Sims Castaway Stories folder to your desktop and try to launch the game again. You can also delete the folder if it's a new game without any saves that you might want to keep.

Then, press the Windows key + X and run Windows Powershell (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin), whichever appears on the list.

Enter this and press Enter: dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth

If it reports any corruption, then also enter dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /Restorehealth

After that, type in sfc /scannow and press Enter, then wait until it ends.

Check if the game still crashes.

If all this fails, I can also give you instructions to install dxvk, which is usually what fixes it in the end, but is used as a last resort for Sims 2 games.

@mate54 hi i tried both of these 

moving the folder didn't seem to make a difference and my laptop detected no corruption in the scan

my game still crashed before even opening - I've only just installed and it won't even open the game at all 

any further guidance would be much obliged!!

@15blythm Alright, these are the instructions to install d3d9.dll which has been helpful to many players who couldn't fix The Sims 2 any other way. I'm not sure if I can post any direct links here, but I'll try my best to describe where you need to look to find this. Make sure that you have WinRar or another program that can open and extract archives.

Do a Google search for doitsujin/dxvk, the first result should lead you to its GitHub page. On the right, under the about section, look for and click on Releases.

The page that opens should list all updates that have been released to this. Look for Version 1.7 (released on May 16, 2020). Other versions might work too, but I can only really vouch for this one because I remember 1.7.1 having some graphical glitches in The Sims 2 and I'm not sure when they were fixed.

Download version 1.7 from the Assets drop-down menu (dxvk-1.7.tar.gz). You should be able to open it with WinRar.

Inside, go to dxvk-1.7 > x32 folder (not x64, because Castaway is not a 64-bit application).

You should see a file d3d9.dll, extract it to the TSBin folder in your Sims Castaway Stories installation folder. 

Try to launch the game and see if it makes a difference.

okay trying this now!!

@mate54 hi again this hasn't worked either.. just to check I shouldn't be running it in compatibility mode or as an administrator and my folder should look like this?

@15blythm 

Those dxvk and d3d9 files are from the d3d9.dll which is normal. I am noticing that two files, which my game has, are missing (paul.dll and GL.ini) but that might be because mine is a digital download.

I am not really sure what else to recommend because I've gone through all the common fixes, but you can try installing DirectX 9 using these instructions. I'm sorry that it's still not working, but I am running out of options.

@mate54 Ok thank you very much for your help!! you've been great 🙂 ill try that 

@Tremayne4260 hi yeah i did try this one of the first things i did lol

i found out one of the main zip files on the disc was corrupted so i am taking it back to CeX tomorrow >☹️((

@mate54 Hey - just wanted to say that after having done loads of workarounds (compatibility mode/run as admin etc.), I tried this solution - but with the newest version (1.9.2) and it worked like a charm. So thanks so much for providing this info. Much appreciated!