I recently had to replace my hard drive in my iMac. This is a 2012 iMac, NOT one of the post-2013 with the known graphics issue. I have the base game and several expansions on disc, and I downloaded some other expansions from Origin. The game ran fine, even with mods, before my hard drive fried. Since I replaced it, I tried to reinstall my game and have had nothing but problems.
A brief description of the things I've tried:
First, I downloaded everything from Origin. The base game, all the expansions, and the one stuff pack I had. I did this all in one sitting, then installed them all before trying to play. During the installation, I got an error on several expansion packs telling me the version was more recent than expected and to be sure to update before playing. I continued to install anyway, figuring from the way it was worded that I could just update when opening the game the first time. Once everything installed, I clicked on the base game and got an 'unknown error'. I couldn't find the uninstaller, so I followed Bluebellflora's guide and uninstalled everything.
I then tried installing just the base game ONLY from the disc, instead of from Origin. It seemed to work, the launcher came up, and it updated/patched the game. It then gave me an option to install a patch for store content, and I tried, but it wouldn't install. Some kind of exception raised or something like that. I tried again, same thing, and the launcher quit both times. So I opened it again and chose not to update the store content. The screen went black, just showing the cursor arrow, and froze there. I had to force quit again.
One last time I uninstalled using the uninstaller this time. Then reinstalled from the disc and used the manual patch from Bluebellflora's blog. Denied the store content patch, and tried to play. Same issue, black screen and force quit. So now I have the base game installed and up to date but still can not play. Any suggestions?
On a side note, I had a similar problem with my Spore game (another EA title). I installed it and went through 5 separate patch/updates, only to have the game not open. I uninstalled that one and reinstalled it without doing any of the updates, and it plays fine. I would try to do the same with the Sims 3, and not update it, but then my expansion packs will not be compatible. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
Edited to add: Before the hard drive fried I was NOT running Sierra, I think it was Snow Leopard that I was using as my OS. When I replaced the hard drive I had to upgrade the OS in order to use my preferred browser. So the game ran fine on the previous OS but not on Sierra.
