Serious Problems w/the Game

[Sonshine]

Hi, I'm *trying* to get a new game going b/c my old one got corrupted and it worked fine last night, but today when I start launcher and then start loading the game, it gets right up to the end and then I get a black screen and my only option is to restart my comp. I've never had this problem before. Any suggestions for how I can repair this? Thanks!

[MrsFlynn]

Is this happening with using a fresh/new Sims 3 folder? If so, have you tried repair game?

In Origin > Game Library Tab: Right-click on Sims 4 or Sims 3 and select Repair Game.

Since your computer is crashing in a way, here are some other troubleshooting tips.

General Crashing Issues
http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=20732.msg425173#msg425173

If these tips above don't help please post back and we'll dive deeper into the problem.

[Sonshine]

Well, that didn't help. I completely cleared out game and all my browser cache files as well as the Origin cache. Now, I can't start the game at all! I get to the point of signing in to origin and it accepts it, then flashes and a few min later the sign in window comes up again. Before deleting the origin cache, the game would load and just barely get to the family selection window, then boom - black screen!

[Magz from Oz]

When was the last time you cleaned your computer especially the heat sink.  I had that very same blank screen problem and when my son opened my computer the power pack and heat sink looked like an Egyptian excavation site.  My son cleaned up everything.  He said my graphics card was overheating - hence the blank screen.  Now everything runs really well.

[Sonshine]

It's been a while so I'll look into that tomorrow.

[MrsFlynn]

I'd have to agree with Magz. It may have something to do with your graphics card. As when you were first explaining the problem it was sounding familiar.

Hopefully cleaning up around it helps. If it doesn't you may need to have it looked at to see if it needs to be replaced.

[Sonshine]

Well, I cleaned as much as I could. There was some dust on the card and I brushed it off and took some canned air to the inside. I loaded up the game and it did get to the family selection screen, but it only lasted about 2 seconds, then boom! Also, I don't know if origin changed something or not, but I cannot stay logged in to it despite the fact that I have checked "keep me logged in." To be honest, it may seem totally radical, but I think I'm just going to uninstall and re-install the whole game. This is the only game it does this to. I do several facebook games and some older, but still graphics intensive civilization games and they work just fine w/no problems at all. The sims one is the only one this happens to so, I'm thinking that something may have happened to the installation. I'll try a completely and totally vanilla game before I do this and if that crashes, then I'll do the radical method.

Edit: I'm trying sims 4 now to see what happens on that one. If that works, then I will completely uninstall and re-install sims 3

Edit2: It didn't work. It loaded the neighborhood screen, but when I tried loading the family, it went to a black screen again.   It did give me a msg about missing content and possibly neighborhoods missing, but I'm thinking that this might be related to patching the game and not having anything beyond GTW. This whole thing seems to be pointing to origin. If it were my video card, I would have problems w/other games as well.

[MrsFlynn]

Thank you for the updates on the issue.

Are you having problems with both Sims 3 and 4 or is it just Sims 3 black screening? The reason I ask is cause you mentioned Get to Work (GTW) which is part of Sims 4.

Something just came to mind to ask. Have you updated your video card drivers lately?

A couple of links I found while searching:

Black screens, crashing or freezing in Sims 3? Try Windowed Mode.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/the-sims/the-sims-3/black-screens-crashing-or-freezing-in-sims-3-try-windowed-mode/

Black Screen, long loading times and TMP files in DCCache
http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2013/06/black-screen-long-loading-times-and-tmp-files-in-dccache.html

If you think it may be Origin messing things up. Try uninstalling it and reinstall it. I had to do that recently myself cause it didn't update correctly.

[Sonshine]

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. It is both #3 and #4 that is black screening. In #3, both windowed and full screen black screen even in a vanilla game w/no cc and no created families.   I'll take a look at Crin's tip and see what happens. I may well hae to uninstall origin. The game worked good until yesterday.  I can't even start the game in origin! I have to go to my program files 86 and find the icon for the game (TS3W) and run as admin.

[Sonshine]

Hi, I'm *still* trying to work on this and it is *still* black screening! At one point the other day, my comp even refused to boot up. When our tech was here, even she was mystified about the black screen. I read Crin's post and it really doesn't say anything applicable to me. I do have the tmp files in the DCCache folder. I also tried the "troubleshoot compatibility" option when I right click on the TS3W icon in the game bin and chose the first option first (Try recommended settings). That took me to the next window which said "Settings applied:  Windows compatibility mode Windows XP (service pack #2).

You need to start the program to make sure these new settings have fixed the problem. After running the program using these settings, click Next to continue."

There is a "Start the Program" button beneath this paragraph. I tried pressing that button which started the game and ultimately ended in the black screen. When I clicked on "Next," I got the same results after pressing the "start program" button.  One thing that I've recently done before all of this started happening was that I installed an old game that required Direct X software to be installed. That doesn't really make sense now, b/c our tech rolled my comp back to the 17th of this month and now the DX software is gone and the game still black screens. I also just bought Lunar Lakes, but that worked for a while. I am  totally out of ideas now. At this point, I think I'm going to try to contact EA support and see if I can get anywhere w/them.

[MrsFlynn]

I'm not sure how much help EA CS will be. But I'm curious as to what they say. 

Question, have you tried running Origin as administrator? Right-click on Origin and select Run as Administrator. If so does that help?