Hello all,

I haven't played Sims for about a month and then when I went to start it up today I can't skip the intro and then when it does finish loading it stays at a black screen with no sound. The only way I can get out is to ctrl+alt+del and restart my laptop My caches are cleared and I haven't downloaded anything new since the last time I played and it was running fine. I do have cc, but haven't had this problem before. Help please?

Thank you in advance!

I have also tried taking out the "saves" folder and "mods", but to no avail.

This is indeed puzzling if nothing has changed since the game last run properly (really though, no operating system or device driver updates?). Can we get a sense of the hardware you are running on? If you could, please copy/paste the first 40 lines or so of the DeviceConfig.log, a file that will be in your TS3 user game folder in Documents; it may show up as just DeviceConfig if you have file extensions hidden. Not the long lists of game options that follow, just the sections before that.

Also, are you on Windows or Mac, and how many and which EPs are you playing? What kind of install is this, Origin digital, Steam, retail store discs, something else and what patch level is the game on?

A more complete test than removing content though would be to pull your entire TS3 user game folder to the Desktop for safekeeping and seeing if the game will launch properly on the new, no content game folder that will spawn to take it's place. This is called a factory reset or the Clean Folder Test (same thing).

Hello Igazor,

Thanks so much for your reply. I am running Windows, I have the following EP's: Supernatural, Ambitions, Late Night, World Adventures, Generations, Pets, Seasons, and University Life. I honestly can't recall the original install, but most likely Steam. If not, Origin. I am patched to 1.67.2.024037

It should be noted that when I go to "Verify Integrity of Game Files" through Steam, I get the message: "3 files failed to validate and will be reacquired". I tried that route once and it still won't start up properly. 

Device cong:

=== Application info ===
Name:            Sims3
Version:         
Build:           Release
=== Rating info ===
GPU: 5 GPU Memory: 4 CPU: 3 RAM: 4 CPU Speed: 2494 Threading: 3
Adjusted CPU: 2925 RAM: 8075 Adjusted RAM: 7563 Cores: 4
=== Machine info ===
OS version:      Windows 8  6.2.9200
OS prod type:    0
OS major ver:    6
OS minor ver:    2
OS SP major ver: 0
OS SP minor ver: 0
OS is 64Bit:     1
CPU:             GenuineIntel
    Brand:       Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4710HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz
    Family:      6
    Model:       12
    Cores:       4
    HT:          1
    x64:         0
Memory:          8075MB
Free memory:     3191MB
User:            Annie
Computer:        CONWAY
=== Graphics device info ===
Number:          0
Name (driver):   NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M
Name (database): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M [Found: 0, Matched: 0]
Vendor:          NVIDIA
Chipset:         Vendor: 10de, Device: 1392, Board: 185d1043, Chipset: 00a2
Driver:          nvldumd.dll, Version: 24.21.13.9811, GUID: D7B71E3E-50D2-11CF-A055-503818C2D535
Driver version:  9811
Monitor:         \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory:  2160MB
Vertex program:  3.0
Pixel program:   3.0
Hardware TnL:    1

The "Device Config" folder has a small red x on it too fyi.

Thank you very much for your reply.

 

Igazor,


So I just tried the "Verify Integrity of Game" option again and the game started fine with my last game save in the "Saves" folder. I exited out and tried again with the saved game back in and it black screened me. I'm no overly attached to the last game save, so I can just start a new game but is there any way to salvage it (out of curiosity)? I'm assuming my save file is corrupted somehow?

Thanks again!:)

That's a heavy load of EPs, but the DeviceConfig suggests that your system should be able to handle all of them.

This may not be it, but the first thing I see is that you have 8 GB of RAM but before the game even tries to startup your system is using 5 GB of it for something. That still leaves enough behind to (probably) service the game, but that's an awful lot of RAM to be using for just Windows, even Win 10. Do you get any different results if you freshly restart your computer and not have anything like web browsers, media players, or other applications running at the time you attempt to start the game?

(... and some other stuff that is not relevant since I missed your last post until now)

We haven't really ruled out the game folder itself being the culprit. Does the game start on a clean, freshly started game folder and does the bad sounding save load when you redo the mods Framework and include only the mods that would be required for it to run? You can always put your original user game folder back after testing on a clean one, they are meant to be swappable. Regardless, it does sound like you might have a corrupt save on your hands.

My laptop has been acting "weird" the past week, but the only thing I've changed was backing up my files via an online cloud. How do I find out what's using so much of my RAM? I can try restarted with my browser closed, but I didn't much much open other than a Google search and another tab.

I just started on a fresh save and it is okay so far. What do you mean by redo-in the nods framework? Sorry, I'm not as savvy as most

The more recent versions of Chrome (and sometimes Firefox) will do it -- they can begin reserving RAM for what they think the user might want to do as soon as you open up one tab. With 8 GB, it's best to try to not have anything other than what is required to run the system going at the time the game is started up. You can see what is using or reserving RAM by pulling up the Task Manager (right click on your toolbar on the bottom of the screen, to the left of where the system clock is) and the processes tab. If you see %s instead of MB/GB of RAM usage, right-click on the column to change that to actual values and you can sort by that column.

There really shouldn't be a cloud backup taking place while the game is trying to run if that is happening, that could be too much for any system to handle well. Also be sure that your TS3 user game folder is really in Documents and not in OneDrive. If the game folder itself is getting caught up in cloud operations, that will interfere with the game running. A common suggestion is to disable OneDrive entirely unless you have a really good reason to be using it otherwise. It tends to be on by default on Win 10 and the game folder should not be in there.

By Mods Framework I mean your Mods folder with its required two subfolders and the Resource.cfg file. That which is required to make package based content such as mods actually work.

I don't know if this is a factor, but the October 10 update for Win 10 is reported to have messed up (and even deleted) some people's files.

gcgrad post_id=58598 time=1539560241 user_id=8527 wrote: I don't know if this is a factor, but the October 10 update for Win 10 is reported to have messed up (and even deleted) some people's files.


 

Seriously? This kind of thing is not making me look forward to my own eventual transition to Win 10 at all. As I understand it, the user doesn't get much say in the matter as to when these updates take place and what they include. I've seen enough of Win 10 already in trying (with varying degrees of success) to suppress the totally unnecessary and unprofessional features on a corporate network -- no, my users do not need Cortana nor do they want to connect to their Xbox games or explore shopping opportunities.

Sorry for the rant but honestly MS, enough already!