Screen goes black and Windows locks up

[FlamingoKicker]

I tried something last night that could shed some light (or possibly not) on the situation.   I had noticed that the game allowed me to play for about 10 minutes before crashing so I thought I'd try something different when I got to the ten-minute mark instead of just waiting for the game to crash.

I had my sim jump in the car and travel to a different lot and thought "oh it's going to crash anyway" but instead it just kept playing on the other lot.  I played that lot for 10 minutes, jumped back in the car and traveled to another lot.   In this way I played for about an hour until I forgot to keep track of time and the game crashed.

I have no idea why it makes any difference why you can only play on a given lot for 10 minutes or why this suddenly changed in the game.  I've had this same graphics card and system for decades and never had a problem with the Sims before the recent "update".

I have no problems with any other software either so it doesn't seem like the hardware is failing or something logical like that.

I thought maybe if I reset my system back to before the update maybe everything would be set back to when it worked but then I remembered I'd installed Snowy Escape so the game would demand I update Origin to be able to play that, right?  I can't uninstall just that pack from the massive Sims 4 software pack?

[puzzlezaddict]

@FlamingoKicker  You can in fact uninstall Snowy Escape, but you probably can't go back to a previous patch level.  A system restore point usually doesn't include enough data for that: it might contain your user files from that date, but probably not the entire pre-patch Sims 4 install.

If you're merely looking to remove Snowy Escape though, you can just delete the EP10 folder from [game install location]\The Sims 4.  While this is officially unsupported, the worst that can happen is you need to repair the game.  Origin will probably try to redownload the missing pack at least once though, and more often if you have auto game updates enabled, so be sure to alt-tab back to Origin from the Main Menu and cancel any download in process.

Your description sounds like some data is being messed with after ten minutes of not changing, and loading a different lot is enough of a change to that data to reset the timer on whatever process is interfering.  One possible culprit is OneDrive trying to sync the contents of Documents; another is a cleaner app that tries to remove temp data.  You could address each possibility individually; if you don't get anywhere, it's worth trying to play while your computer is offline as well, that is if you haven't already.

[FlamingoKicker]

Oh  yeah... I tried playing 'off-line"  or disconnecting from wifi and didn't seem to make any affect.

[puzzlezaddict]

@FlamingoKicker  Alright, let me know about OneDrive and any cleaner app you might be running.  I guess it's also possible that the game is running out of some resource that is reset by changing lots, but resource use tends to not be that predictable, as in, it might take ten minutes to go over the limit one time and 15 another.

[FlamingoKicker]

I wasn't sure what OneDrive even was but looked it up and I don't use that at all.  I have CCleaner on my machine.  Should I disable that next time I test my game?  It has never been a problem in the past.

[puzzlezaddict]

@FlamingoKicker  Yes, please disable CCleaner and see whether it helps.

[FlamingoKicker]

They claim it isn't a program that will run automatically and there is no way to just disable it.  

[FlamingoKicker]

Well I tried it anyway and of course it didn't make any difference.  Probably should have realized this earlier when I did a clean boot and disabled all unneeded programs and that didn't help.

[puzzlezaddict]

@FlamingoKicker  You'd be surprised what still runs in a clean boot.  (I've heard of everything from MSI Afterburner to RGB software.)  Anyway, the ten minute interval is quite strange, and I'm having trouble thinking of what might cause it.  In case it catches something odd, hardware monitoring might be useful.  If you want to try, download hwinfo from here:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

You don't need to install anything if you don't want to; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you want.  (If you would like to install, be sure to click the green button, not the orange one.)  Restart your computer, and don't open any other apps.  Launch hwinfo, choose "sensors only," and click the icon that's a sheet of paper with a + sign to start logging.  Save the file to your desktop for easy access later.

Wait five minutes, then launch Sims 4 and play until your computer locks up.  The log should still be intact up to that point, but please let me know how long the interval is between when you start hwinfo and when the lockup happens, in case the log cuts off early.  You can upload the log to a third-party free filehosting site and link it here.  Please leave it in .csv format, or if you use OneDrive to share, please compress it in .zip format instead.

[FlamingoKicker]

For some reason I tried making a new family in the big city neighborhood . I think that's Seasons with all the festivals and for whatever reason without changing anything else it played perfectly (although when it snows in winter the game really lags a bit),  But if I go back to the other neighborhoods like Snowy Escape its still messed up and crashes so maybe it's just something about that neighborhood install?  Maybe uninstall and reinstall it?  I've run repair on the base game but I have problems getting thru all the rest of the expansions without the repair function giving up the ghost and stopping.