Can't load the game - screen goes black after intro

[Frey]

Hi!

My game has started acting weird today. I open the game via the launcher and the intro plays normally but I can't skip it (by pressing enter or whatever). Then, after the intro is done, the screen goes completely black. I can't see the arrow of the mouse, I can't press ctrl+alt+tab, I can't quit and my only option is to force the game to close via ctrl+alt+delete. The game doesn't crash to desktop and I don't get any error messages either, it just goes black. It doesn't happen everytime I load the game either, it's more like a random thing.

I have no CC, no mods and my laptop has been able to run the game before without major issues. It tends crash while playin in  Appaloosa Plains but otherwise it's perfectly able to run the game. It's a Samsung R580 with an Nvidia Geforce 310M graphics card, running Win7. I also have enough memory and everything. I installed the latest patch a few days ago, but I have been able to play without trouble until now and the patch even seemed to have fixed my Appaloosa issues. So... I have no idea what is different now that is causing this weird problem all of a sudden.

Any ideas or advise? Has anyone had this before? I would appreciate any help I can get!

EDIT I forgot to mention that even if I get to load the game, it takes a lot longer than before  to load the main menu. I usually load it in 2-3 minutes, but now it takes 10-15 minutes.

[Pam]

Have you tried some of the maintenance procedures on the [utl=http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php/board,12.0.html] Technical Help board?[/url]  It could be just that your game needs cleaning up a bit.

[Frey]

Yes, I have tried pretty much everything I could think of: cleaning cache files, factory reset, running CCleaner to see if I found registry errors... I also defragmented the laptop, cleaned cookies and temporary files and restarted the computer like a hundred times. My base game is patched to the latest version and my expansion packs that have to be manually updated (as explained by Moonsareblue). My DEP are also set correctly since otherwise I can't play... but I don't think it has anything to do with that.

I am really out of ideas. It's really weird because it started out of nothing: I didn't download anything, I didn't install any new programs... as I said, I patched my game recently, but I guess any problems like these caused by the patch would have started right after patching, and not 7-10 days after.

The good is that it happens only like 50% of the time, so at least I can play, but it's getting really annoying having to load the game twice almost everytime I want to play.

[MrsFlynn]

Hi Frey,

I ran your topic by Hubby last night and it totally stumped him as to what to do to help. His only suggestion is after trying all that you did is to uninstall and do a fresh install of the game.

We had to do that recently. It suprisingly didn't take that long, only a few hours. We were thinking it was going to take a couple of evenings.  It helped our games run a lot smoother and load faster too.

MrsFlynn

[Frey]

Yeah, I've been thinking about it too. The thing is I'm from Chile but I'm living in Germany for the semester, and I obviously didn't bring all my CDs. I have all EPs registered at the official site so I could get the keys from there and download them from Origin (I think I read it was possible somewhere). But my internet connection is kind of awful so it would take reaaaaally long. My connection in Chile is better (Daddy pays for it, LOL) and still it took me 3 days (turning off the computer at night) to download Ambitions because my CD was scratched... so I don't even want to think about how long it will take me to download the Base Game and all the EPs with this bad connection!!

The good thing would be not having to use any CDs though!

I'm still trying to fix it somehow though. But it seems to be a weird thing, I haven't found too much in google about it. So maybe I will have to do the Origin thing.

Thanks you and your hubby for the help! 

Any other suggestions are welcome.

[MrsFlynn]

I think Hubby mentioned he used both the cds and Origin's download versions when doing his fresh install. Used the cds for the expansions, and downloaded the stuff packs, as they were the smaller of the bunch.

We get a reasonable speed here where we live. So I didn't even think there might be slow internet speeds in other places. I'm sorry about that. *Blush* With knowing that, I'm not sure what to do.  

MrsFlynn

[Frey]

Yeah, at home I have a decent speed but here I just have the cheapest one! Europe is way to expensive to have decent internet connection   .

But that's OK, I could still leave the thing downloading while I'm in the city or something. I just want to try everything else first. Today it only happened once so maybe I could just deal with it until I'm back in Chile in October. I will have to see how oft it happens.

[Chuckles_82]

Have you tried running it in windowed mode? I used to run the game without the disc, and the only way it would work was to open the options.ini file (in your sims 3 folder in my documents) and change fullscreen = 1 to fullscreen = 0.

[Frey]

I just did - didn't work.

Luckily it's happening less often now. Like once a day or something like that.

[Frey]

Well, I found out something new. I'm still not sure what it means but it must have something to do with it.

Today I was cleaning my cache files again and found several new archives I hadn't seen before. They are all called "xcpt [COMPUTER NAME] [some weird numbers]". I opened them and they seems to be some kind of application log:

[Application info]
Language: C++
Compiler: Microsoft Visual C++ compiler, version 1400
App path: C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe
App version: 0.2.0.177

[Exception info]
date: 2012-08-13
time: 15.28.22
type: ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x000000c8
address: 0x00b5a4f4 "C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\TS3W.exe":0x0001:0x007594f4

I tried to google around and see what "access violation" means but didn't find much. All my games are original and registered so that shouldn't be the problem.

I also found a LauncherLogFile, but it's empty inside.

Note: I edited the post to replace the log file with the newest one.