Travelling to a lot deletes it.

Punch2daFace​  If there is currently a Sims 4 folder in Documents > Electronic Arts, remove or rename it and try again.  If that doesn't help, or there is no folder, try deleting the Electronic Arts folder here:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp

If that doesn't help either, look for new errors in the Reliability Monitor.  Click 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 an error that happened at exactly the time of your most recent attempt to open Sims 4.  If you find one, double-click it to see more details, then copy that info and paste it into a reply here.  If you don't see a new error, check back in an hour or so—the Reliability Monitor doesn't always update right away.

No error at all usually means the game is being blocked from loading rather than it crashing.  The typical reasons that could happen are listed here:

[CURRENT ISSUE] Sims 4 Unable to Start, Already Running | EA Forums - 11818313

Even though you're not getting that error, something on the list may be helpful.  I'd start with your antivirus since that's the most common reason the game would fail to launch with no error.

Heya,

There is just no response on my regular Windows. Then, when I go over to the new one I've created, the Sims4 is up and loaded in. I'm definitely interested in fixing this issue or at least finding the root cause. 

Punch2daFace​  Do you get an error when trying to open the game, or does it just not respond?  There's a list of errors here if you have one to compare:

🗂️[INDEX] List of Common Errors | EA Forums - 12697290

Otherwise, this could be a further issue with AppData, as the game tries to dump some data there almost as soon as it launches.  Or it could be something else.  I'm happy to try to troubleshoot the problem with you if you're interested, but I would also understand if you just want to use the new account.

Heya puzzlezaddict​ ,

We can definitely test out this issue. However, I've run into a new issue. The sims4 now only opens in the new Windows location I have created. I'm not sure if this is just a user error, or if I have done something wrong. I'll send over all asked details as soon as I can figure this out!

Punch2daFace​  Would you like to try to fix your main Windows account so the game works there too?  Barring that, would you be willing to do a bit of testing for information-gathering purposes?  Crinrict and I have been talking about how this kind of issue might arise, but we can't test directly since this doesn't happen on our own computers.

If you're interested, please open your save in your old account, then open the location for the scratch folder I listed earlier and let me know what you see inside scratch_[numbers].  Just like before, I'd want to know how many files there are overall (if any) and how many of those are close to zero bytes, and also how this changes (if at all) when your sims travel.

Thank you for all your help and patience crinrict​! 

Hiya, 

Creating a new windows account has successfully solved any issues I was having! Thank you so much. 

Hi Punch2daFace​ 

I'm going to leave you in Puzzlez capable tech hands of handling this further. 

Just wanted to say that yes, the scratch data is probably the root of your issue. While you play the game, all houses have their own file in the scratch folder and if those files aren't properly saved, you will see the houses disappear. 

Punch2daFace​  It sounds like the game is pushing this change (to use AppData to store the scratch folder) despite the setting.  I don't know whether that's true for every player yet, but if it is for you, I'm not sure there's a way around it.

What you could try now is creating a new admin Windows account and playing there.  Since AppData is specific to each Windows account, the new one might not be affected by whatever is breaking the game in your current account.  That of course depends on whether the problem is in AppData or elsewhere.

Point is, create a new account, make it local (not tied to your Microsoft account or any email address; you can skip this step and answer some security questions instead), play in that account, and see how it goes.

If you have the issue in the new account, I'd like to know what files are in the scratch folder while you play and whether this changes as time goes on.  The full path to scratch would be this:

C:\Users\[usernme]\AppData\Local\Temp\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4

Clicking Windows key-R and entering %AppData% gets you partway there.  And to be clear, there should be a scratch_[numbers] folder inside the scratch folder, with lots of small files inside, and both of these folders would be deleted once you quit.

When you first load the game, open the scratch_[numbers] folder, sort by file size, and note the number of files and whether any are essentially zeroed out (9 bytes or similar).  Then when you encounter the issue again, take another look and let me know what, if anything, has changed.  There will be too many files to effectively take screenshots, but you'll get the idea just by poking around.

Hiya, 

I've turned off one drive. In GameConfig the useappdataforscratch keeps reverting back to 1 after a while. Would this be the cause of the issue?