Game keeps crashing

[lauraaliceeeee]

Hello! My TS4 keeps crashing. I will start a new save, play for around an hour, and it'll crash. On reloading it'll crash in around 10-30 mins, and then next reload it will be even shorter with a breakpoint exception. The main places it will crash are when loading between travelling or CAS, but it can happen on opening in game windows (e.g. sim info).

I play with no mods and my PC isn't overclocked. I run with all expansions, all game backs (bar wedding stories, werewolves, and batuu), all stuff packs (bar my first pet, nifty knitting, and toddler). I do not have any kit packs.

I have double checked my specs and while my pc is old, it meets (and in some places exceeds) the recommended hardware spec. 

Software wise, I have updated the game and origin. I have updated my GPU driver, repaired the game, uninstalled and reinstalled the game, uninstalled the game and origin and reinstalled the game and origin, renamed my game file and reset game data to factory settings. I have also turned off origin in game. I'm really not sure what else I can do and its super depressing to keep losing progress and have to repeat it all again

I've attached my DXDIAG, for some reason it has an error attaching my two last crash reports so I will work on attaching them in a reply!

[belalou222]

i’m having the same problem as well! glad to know i’m not the only one 

[puzzlezaddict]

@lauraaliceeeee  Even though you updated it, the driver for your graphics card is quite old, which isn't surprising given how old the card itself is.  While the driver should still work in theory, it's possible that it's not fully compatible with Sims 4 and you'll see issues no matter what you do.

But there are plenty of other possibilities as well.  To start with, I'd like to see a crash dump from Sims 4.  Click Windows key-R and copy and paste this:

%LocalAppData%\CrashDumps

When you enter, you'll see a list of .dmp files.  If one of them is from Sims 4 or Origin, please upload it to a third-party filehosting site (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and link it here.  If you see a crash dump that was written at exactly the time the game crashed, I'd like that too.  But in either case, please only upload files from after we started troubleshooting here.

[lauraaliceeeee]

So I actually think i fixed it! I tried to find my crash dumps file and my pc didn't have one. So I had to make one. BUT during this process, I noticed my memory use was WAAAY high and my sims crash files were all memory dumps. I saw that Windows Defender AntiVirus was always on so I had a google how to turn it off. I turned off real time protection and now it runs like a dream! I think i still have some memory issues with my RAM, but turning off the real time protection when i play my game has been working so far!


CM Edit: Please do not suggest disabling Windows Defender as a troubleshooting step as this is potentially harmful to your and others PCs. 

[puzzlezaddict]

@lauraaliceeeee  It's a really bad idea to disable Windows Defender's real-time protection unless you have a third-party antivirus running, or you're going to be very careful not to open any external sites while the feature is disabled.  Otherwise, your computer will be left without any protection at all, and it only takes one malicious pop-up to infect your system with a virus.

If the problem here is in fact Windows Defender, then the next step is to figure out why, for example disabling Controlled Folder Access or setting exceptions for Origin.exe and TS4_x64.exe.  You could also try playing while your computer is offline.

[lauraaliceeeee]

@puzzlezaddict Yeah, I'm careful to just disable it before playing, will just play (no internet or anything else on) then will turn it back on as soon as I'm done! And ah that's a good idea - I'll give those a go too and report back