My game keeps crashing without warning [ Edited ]

[americovj856]

Greetings all

As the title says, my Sims 4 keeps crashing without warning. I have already cleaned the cache, uninstalled and installed the game (and did the same with Origin) repaired the game, removed all the mods that i was using, used compatibility mode (made it worse), lowered the games definitions (graphics and such), removed the option of opening Origin in-game.

My issue is that, my older laptop was weaker than this one, the game was slow as hell, but it never crashed. On my current laptop, the game runs fine, but crashes, constantly and without warning. I have no idea of what else i can do.

I tried to insert the lastcrash.txt, but it gives me the error "The attachment's lastcrash.txt content type (text/plain) does not match its file extension and has been removed."

[puzzlezaddict]

@americovj856  Your laptop should definitely be able to run Sims 4, even on ultra settings, without crashing.  There's nothing in your dxdiag that makes it clear why the game is crashing either, just that it is.  But your computer saved more information on the crashes.  Please open a File Explorer window and paste this path into the address bar:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp

You should see at least a couple of .mdmp files, maybe a number of them.  Since some might be from errors unrelated to Sims 4, please just grab all the files from the last two days.  You probably can't drag and drop, so instead, right-click on each file and select Copy, then right-click on your desktop and Paste.  Zip the files together, upload them to the filesharing site of your choice, and link them here.

[americovj856]

I checked it, but it's empty. I double checked because i might have the option of not showing hidden files, but it's still empty

Now i tried to run the game again, crashed even before i was able to start a game. 

[puzzlezaddict]

@americovj856  Do you have any apps installed that automatically clean up temp or other files?  That would delete the logs, perhaps before you got a chance to find them.  Please disable any such apps you have, at least for now.

Otherwise, look again in the same location for any files with the .mdmp extension.  If you don't see any, search This PC for *.dmp and *.mdmp (both with the asterisk, then the file extension), and upload any you find that match the time of the last Sims 4 crash.  It's fine if you don't find any; there are ways to make a computer write one if necessary, and if the crashes are the kind that should produce one.

Please also test with a clean user data folder, just to be thorough, and even if you've tried it before.  Move your entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, and when you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Don't add anything to this folder yet; just try to play and see whether it crashes.  Let me know if it does, and how long you can play first.  And please run another dxdiag, so I can see whether the errors have changed.

[americovj856]

I was able to find these dmp files, all related to the recent Sims 4 crashes

https://www107.zippyshare.com/v/pkAN443g/file.html

My girlfriend reminded me of something. The crash usually happens on the City Living Expasion. I moved all of the Sims 4 files to the desktop and played the game, base game. Worked fine. As soon as i moved to the expasion, the game crashed.

I asked my girlfriend and she said that all of the crashes happened on the City Living Expasion, which i find extremely odd.

[puzzlezaddict]

@americovj856  I'm sorry for the late reply.  I can't get the files you uploaded to download, on a couple different computers and OSs.  I think the site you used isn't safe either: the download buttons wanted to open executables and other files that might run on their own if I wasn't paying attention.

Please use Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or some other trusted site.  You should be able to create a free account somewhere.

San Myshuno has a number of issues that aren't present, or aren't as problematic, in other worlds.  Your computer shouldn't be crashing like this though.

[americovj856]

Sorry about that. I completely forgot that Drive could be used for this sort of thing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t22GHsYUj5me-DUBTxHFrFa_Z-lsj_Jj/view?usp=sharing

Just to share my "progress"... None whatsoever. Game randomly starts to be slow and suddenly crashes.

[puzzlezaddict]

@americovj856  All six of the errors in the minidump files are the same: breakpoint errors, which aren't very specific but at least suggest where to start looking.  You've already uninstalled and reinstalled the game, which would be the first step.  The next easy step is to run a couple of basic checks on your Windows system files.  Here's how:

• Hit Windows key-X
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
• Inside the window that appears, copy and paste “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes into the window, and enter
• The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here
• After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key-X again
• Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator)”
• Inside the window, copy and paste “sfc /scannow” without quotes into the window, and enter
• Post the message you receive here

If sfc reports that if found corrupt files and was unable to repair some of them, please let me know, and stop here.  Otherwise, clear Origin's cache:

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/

Then restart your computer, and update Sims 4 if you haven't already, then repair for good measure.  Try to play, again in a clean folder, and play in San Myshuno or whatever the circumstances are where you've been seeing crashing.  If you happen to notice a pattern to what's going on in-game before the crashes, great, but don't worry too much about it.

The next step would be to update or (more likely) clean uninstall and reinstall the drivers for your graphics cards, using the most updated versions from the HP website.  Without your computer in front of me, I can't be sure I'm looking at the correct download page—HP makes it difficult to find that page, and it's not a good idea to guess.  So please go here:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/laptops

Enter the serial number for your laptop, select your OS if necessary, and you'll land on the driver download page for your laptop.  Please link it here.  The download page doesn't contain any information about your specific computer, just the model.  I'll double-check all your drivers and post instructions for a clean uninstall and reinstall of the GPU drivers, if there aren't newer ones ready to install, which there may not be given how recent your current drivers are.

Even though City Living content has its issues, it shouldn't be causing Sims 4 to crash repeatedly as you've described, at least not on your laptop.  The problem that directly causes the crashes may be triggered by something related to CL, but the point is that under normal circumstances, the game would recover, so to speak, or else produce some smaller glitch that didn't result in a crash.  So CL content is probably just presenting the circumstances that reveal a system issue, not the extent of the issue itself.

[americovj856]

I did everything you said up until drive update. Here are the results.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Got to 100% and showed no error

sfc /scannow

Showed me the menu that you can see in the attatchment

The rest i did exactly what you wrote. Bad news? it crashed 3 minutes after getting on CL (didn't try on main game). The good news? at least showed me a message, that you can see in the attachment as well.

Forgot to add the HP thing. Here's my laptop

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-pavilion-gaming-15-ec0000-laptop-pc-series/29322...

And man, if nothing works, at least you went above and beyond to help out, and i really appreciate it.

[puzzlezaddict]

@americovj856  I'm not ready to give up yet, and if I run out of ideas, I'll ask for a second opinion.

The error in your second screenshot is of the same kind as the ones in the crash dumps, which is good confirmation if not really surprising.  The sfc messages you saw are because there was an extra space after the slash ( sfc / scannow instead of sfc /scannow ), so it didn't run.

If sfc doesn't fix the issue, please run any pending Windows updates: hit Windows key-i, select Update & Security, click the button to check for updates, and download any listed.  Please also see whether Windows offers you the option to update to build 2004, the May 2020 update.  I'm not saying you should definitely update at this point, but it's worth considering if other options don't work.  So let me know whether you can in fact install it (Windows is blocking the update for some people until certain bugs are addressed) and whether you'd be willing to do so.

There is in fact a new driver for your integrated graphics chip, but the driver for your Nvidia card is newer than the newest HP version.  Still, if sfc and running updates don't help, doing a clean uninstall and reinstall of the drivers is a reasonable next step.  You can always manually update the Nvidia driver later if you want.  But try the other steps first, because this could very well be unrelated to the GPU drivers, and as long as they're working properly, there's no reason to replace them.