Booted back to menu when I try to load a household [ Edited ]

[alicewalpurgis]

Hello there - I'd like to preface by saying I'm aware there have been many threads like this one in the past, but since I have read a good deal of them and nothing so far seems to have worked for me, I decided to create my own thread. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Quite recently (a few days before the new Freelancer update) I started having this problem. I had created a family in Strangerville, played a few in-game days and then decided to travel to the Strangerville bar. Once the game began to load the new lot, it just kept going and going, until eventually, I got booted back to the menu. I closed the game immediately, ran a few standard checks (I repaired my game, checked online to see if any of my script mods needed updates - which some did, so I downloaded them) and reloaded the game from an autosave. I noticed that now, my gave was actually telling me that the Strangerville bar was actually an incomplete lot, even though it was just as it had always been. I did a few checks and found out I was able to edit lots, but once I tried to load a household, the game would still boot me back to the menu.

I went back and ran extensive tests with my mods/scripts folders. I also completely 'rebooted' with new game files by changing my original game folder's name to 'Sims 4 Backup' and allowing the game to create a fresh folder upon startup. But all to no avail. Once or twice the game would work with few to no mods/scripts, but if I tried booting the game a second time with identical conditions, it then sometimes wouldn't work at all. I wasn't able to pinpoint whether a bad mod was actually the cause - it happened to work/not work so many times it honestly just seemed random. So I returned to an even earlier backup save and everything seemed to work alright. Then today I tried playing a family for the first time since it started crashing, and once I tried to travel somewhere, guess what? Same problem! Anyway, I'm sorry the explanation is so long but there may be clues in this information I'm simply not seeing. Here's a screenshot of the error message I've been receiving.

Here's also a list of my computer specs, just in case:

Summary
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 @ 1.80GHz 58 °C
Kaby Lake-U/Y 14nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB
Motherboard
Razer Blade Stealth (U3E1)
Graphics
LQ133Z1JW26 (3200x1800@60Hz)
Intel UHD Graphics 620 (Razer USA)
Storage
476GB SAMSUNG MZVLW512HMJP-00000 (Unknown (SSD))
Optical Drives
No optical disk drives detected
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

[kreatora]

@alicewalpurgis 

This is an error caused by the mods. Removing mods is not enough.

Move the mods folder to the desktop.

Delete localthumbcache.package file in the game folder

Fix the game in Origin.
Origin/Library -right click on TS4 - option "Repair game"
You have to wait until Origin will fix all packs, not only the base game.

Turn on the game to create a new, empty mods folder. Check if a game is working now without mods.
Then copy from desktop your mods and CC and paste it in the new mods folder.
First, paste script mods every time checking if the game is OK. Do the same with CC but if you have a lot of this, try the 50/50 method
If it will not work then we'll try another method later

I don't work for EA

[alicewalpurgis]

Hi there,

I apologise for taking so long to reply - personal circumstances. I had no time to test the game out and check if it worked. And unfortunately, now that I have, it still refuses to load households, even without any mods and a deleted cache file. I'm guessing from this it will probably mean I will need to create an entirely new save?

[kreatora]

Hi @alicewalpurgis

You can check whether the game will work properly in the new save. But if not look here and follow this advice
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Error/m-p/7881555#M139702

[alicewalpurgis]

Hi there! Thank you for your reply. Just to be absolutely clear (as I've tried everything so I think I will just have to reinstall the game), is the advice of reinstalling the game given after assuming that, actually, the whole game itself is corrupted? My issues seem to be stemming from getting a blue box over household pictures after I try to load them, and even when I tried to check mods, I deleted one mod that seemed to be an issue, only for the game to fail again because of a different mod which clearly wasn't an issue the first time. Like it's simply spreading through my mods folder.

Sorry to ask, as I know you aren't part of the EA team, but is it actually possible for mod files to become corrupted and need replacing? Though I will go ahead with reinstalling the game, I'm just trying to understand what exactly might be causing the issue. The problem seems to be inconsistent.

[kreatora]

@alicewalpurgis

You have to check the game in a virgin game, in a new game folder without mods if it will work. You did not say whether the new game - without mods in a new game folder - had this error too
If so, then you should reinstall the game.

If no: just check if your mods are up to date before you put them in the game. Sometimes, however, mods collide with each other and will not work properly if they are next to each other in the game.