Sims 4 wont download on MAC/download to hard drive

[hellounknown1993]

Hi,

I moved my origin and sims 4 to a hard drive as on my MAC i was running out of storage (as you can imagine)

Now I have opened up a can of worms and having 100 dilemmas.

Obviously after doing that my game wont load as i have moved the location - so i deleted both origin and sims 4 to try and re install

Now it wont let me re-install to the laptop OR hard drive? It just says preparing......

What am i doing wrong

help me please

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@hellounknown1993  Right, so it sounds like either you need to run the Origin reset tool for macs, or you don't have enough space to download and install TS4.  Again, I don't think you'll get a good experience out of playing from an external hard drive, so you're better off clearing more space on your laptop's internal drive instead.  How much free storage do you currently have there?  You can find out by clicking the Apple logo in the upper right corner of your screen, selecting "About This Mac," and clicking the Storage tab.

[puzzlezaddict]

@hellounknown1993  I'm not sure whether you're having trouble installing Origin or the game.  There are a number of hidden Origin files you'd need to clean out when uninstalling.  Here's a guide:

https://bluebellflora.com/how-to-uninstall-origin-on-a-mac/

If Origin is already installed, you'll want to reset it with this mac-specific tool:

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/how-to-reset-origin-on-mac/

If your laptop is short on space, you might have trouble downloading files even before you install them.  You should be able to choose where to save files when you start the download; make sure that the drive's free space is at least twice the size of the download plus about 25 GB.

Having said all that, it would be better if you installed TS4 on your laptop and moved other files to your external drive.  No matter how fast and well-made an external drive is, it's always going to be limited by the slow speed of data transfer to your computer.  If you can move music or videos, or even extra saved games, to the external, and play games on the internal, you'd have a much better experience.

[hellounknown1993]

I originally tried to move them into the hard drive but then TS4 wouldn’t open so that’s why I removed them completely off the laptop and hardeive and tried to download them directly to the hard drive.

now it won’t let me install the sims 4 to the laptop or hard drive?i

i can download origin fine...

but whenever I go to install the sims it just says processing...... for hours and never downloads

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@hellounknown1993  Right, so it sounds like either you need to run the Origin reset tool for macs, or you don't have enough space to download and install TS4.  Again, I don't think you'll get a good experience out of playing from an external hard drive, so you're better off clearing more space on your laptop's internal drive instead.  How much free storage do you currently have there?  You can find out by clicking the Apple logo in the upper right corner of your screen, selecting "About This Mac," and clicking the Storage tab.

[hellounknown1993]

I tried all of your advice and it has started to download now onto the hard drive. I understand you said it might not work but I might give it a go... I have no idea what else is clogging up my storage on my Mac besides the sims? So couldn’t really delete anything. When I deleted the sims now it has heaps of space. If this doesn’t work might just need a laptop to play games on haha. Thank u have a great night 

[puzzlezaddict]

@hellounknown1993  If you click the Storage tab as I described before, you'll get a breakdown of what's taking up so much space on your hard drive.  (You could just take a screenshot—cmd-shift-4 and drag your cursor over the area you want to capture—and attach it here using the "browse" button.)  You can also check individual apps and folders by right-clicking on them and selecting Get Info.  The size will be listed at the top of the window that opens.  You might need to poke around a bit to figure out what's taking so much space, but the files have to be listed somewhere.