Sims 3 keeps crashing

[redskins93fan]

I bought The Sims 3 and Pets expansion pack off of a Steam bundle a while ago. I stopped playing it for a few months. I just started playing it again today. Everything runs fine until I go to the desktop to do something and try to return to Sims 3. Every time it either instantly brings up a black screen with a mouse but then it will say it crashed, like in the picture. If it doesn't instantly crash, it will a few minutes after returning back to the game. I don't know why it does this but it is getting annoying and I lose all of my progress.

[roberta591]

@redskins93fan  Please post your computer's dxdiag - link - how to post dxdiag  Thank you

[redskins93fan]

Here is my DxDiag

[thesims1depot]

@redskins93fan Not to sound like a broken record (because I always give this advice in situation like yours) but see if your graphics drivers are up to date. 

Also, you mentioned something about minimizing the game to do other things. Sometimes running other programs while playing the game can cause issues. For example, if I run OBS Studio while running TS3, I get Error 16. So what other things are you doing, if you don't mind my asking?

[roberta591]

@redskins93fan  First issue is you cpu is an I3 the operates at 2.4GHz. The I3 is the weakest of the Intel I series and clocked at 2.4GHz is the very slowest recommended speed for this game. While the game should still play the game play may not be acceptable especially with more demanding packs like Seasons. The biggest issue is you video system only has 32Mb of dedicated video memory and the minimum requirement for the Sims 3 is 128Mb of DEDICATED video memory. The problem here is there really is no dedicated video memory as the 32Mb is a reserved chuck of main memory and this directly affects performance. The Intel HD Graphics 4000 is not very powerful which again will affect the performance running this game. While the game may run at first with less then minimum requirements the game may quit running at any time. Even if you get the game to run I fell you will have performance issues as you add packs.

[redskins93fan]

@thesims1depot I normally just get on Microsoft Edge to get on Facebook or look something up for Sims 3.

@roberta591 - A lot of the times that is my "problem" when it comes to another game I play. I don't know why I didn't think about it until now but thanks for the info.