Sims 3 Frozen Screen on Fullscreen Mode - Windows 11 [ Edited ]

[kasshaspants]

I have tried the recommended fixes by editing options.ini, resetting, repairing, uninstalling, etc and have yet to find a fix. Playing in windowed mode works but the UI is small and whenever I set the screen resolution to my computer specs it doesn't change a thing. I just want to play the sims 3 in full screen mode. I play on a surface book pro 3 with the lowest settings. I have also attached a DxDiag report. I hope that maybe able to help some?

[puzzlezaddict]

@kasshaspants  First of all, your laptop hardware should be able to run Sims 3 on ultra settings minus water and high-detail lots, which are hard on the game engine and need to be turned down on any system.  (I keep these on "mirrors only" and 2, respectively.)  Additionally, you'll need to take steps to limit your in-game framerates so your graphics card doesn't needlessly overwork itself.  Let me know if you need help with this process.

I also want to say that the UI will be small if you play at your laptop screen's native resolution no matter what you do.  The UI dimensions are always a set number of pixels, so the only way to make it bigger is to play at a lower resolution and in fullscreen mode.  In your case, fullscreen 1920x1080 should still look great overall and also give you a UI you can actually read.  But you can of course experiment with different settings.

For the current issue, the first obvious issue is that your laptop's graphics driver is from 2021, and additionally, it's a studio driver, meaning one optimized for professional workloads, not gaming.  It is in fact the newest driver offered by Microsoft for a Surface Book 3, but you can download the current game-ready driver from Nvidia instead:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/198797/en-us/

Choose the Custom (not Express) install option and check the box to perform a clean install.  Restart your computer after installing and before doing anything else.