Ok everyone; I'm a long time answerer of this tech forum, but I really need a hand now from anyone who could possibly have a solution.
I run a windows 7 computer, highly optimized for the Sims 3. A few months ago, my computer needed to be completely wiped and started clean. I did so with the help of my tech-savvy boyfriend. I installed my Sims 3 game and proceeded to try to install all of my (ridiculous amount) of store content. I had kept a backup of my downloads folder, and plopped it into my Sims 3 folder (from Documents>Electronic Arts>The Sims 3) and proceeded to download a few things at a time (like 2-5 things, depending on their size). The first little window pops up, with the plumbob and the progress bar, it will get to just about 40% done and then a window will pop up saying "The Sims 3 has stopped working." I fussed and struggled with it for an hour before contacting EA customer support chat. I spent 2 and a half hours on the chat with them with literally no answers. My boyfriend finally looked at me and said, maybe you should do a factory reset? I thought it was crazy, due to the fact that this had nothing to do with the game running poorly, but rather the launcher being stupid.
EA customer support had sent me through the ringer (of things I had pretty much already done anyways, but I did so again to appease them and in hopes that it might actually work magically because EA told me to do it), the various things they had me do included:
>Deleting caches.
>Downloading from different browsers.
>Starting the game as an administrator.
A few other minor things and then finally (after almost 2 hours):
>Turn off my User Account Control (UAC) and restart my computer.
I was hesitant to "restart" and turn off the chat, because I didn't believe it would work, but EA was "sure" it would fix it. So I did it. No luck. I finally caved and thought "what the heck could a factory reset hurt?" I did that and bam. Suddenly my NEWLY downloaded items are installing perfectly. Hah!
Well, ladies and gentlemen of Carl's, I'm having this issue again. My game was running slow and I recently had gone through a bit of a splurge on Store Items, so I figured I would do the decent thing and do a quick, easy, factory reset. I plopped my downloads folder into the new Sims 3 folder, went to install... and the dreaded problem has returned.
This is frustrating, because I know the Sims 3 store will not be open indefinitely. If I can't get my downloads to work from the save in my computer (instead of having to redownload them every time) then I am going to lose a ridiculous amount of money when the EA store closes and have no items to show for it. What am I doing wrong? Is there a fix for this that doesn't involve another factory reset and a clean download/install of my store content EVERY TIME? I keep a backup of all my downloads to make it easier to reinstall, but they never reinstall from there. I have to do a factory reset on my game and download everything fresh in order for it to work. I have another EA chat up, about to give them a piece of my mind as to why this isn't working properly, but I have to wait an hour to get ahold of anyone. I'll try anything, really, I just want to get the peace of mind that I won't lose all of my store content the second the store closes and I need to reinstall/factory reset my game...
