Game won't open

[masterjamo]

Hey. So my problem is that every time I hit the play button the on welcome screen, my computer screen goes black (the little wheel starts spinning), then my desktop shows back up. The sims icon is still in my toolbar and has a status of "Running" on the task manager, which makes it seem like it minimizes itself before it can load. I haven't messed with any of the major options for the game. I'm running on Windows 7 with the latest patch. Any ideas?