Sims 4 Automatically Closes on Startup

[kenanga3177]

Like it says in the title, Sims 4 automatically closes on startup. I am able to get to the splash screen then it closes.

I bought Sims 4 and some DLC during the Steam Winter Sale and some more DLC (including an upgrade to Digital Deluxe) during the more recent Lunar New Year Sale on Steam.

It worked until I bought the additional DLCs during the Lunar New Year Sale.

I've tried: ensuring all drivers are updated, turning off Origin In-Game, a full reinstall of everything Sims 4 related to include Origin, clearing the caches manually, disabling every program I can that runs in the background, repairing the game through Steam as well as Origin (though that just makes Steam do it). I've even tried turning off OneDrive. There's no CC in my game at all, and even if there was I've removed the entire Electronic Arts folder in My Documents to ensure that it starts fresh.

Every solution that comes from an in-depth Google search is what I've tried - so I'm hoping that someone knows something Google doesn't. My game doesn't even generate lastcrash.txt files.

I also know that it's not a problem with my PC specs as I'm able to run Escape from Tarkov on maximum settings as well as Skyrim with loads of 2k/4k textures. I'm running W10 on the latest update as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I've sunk some serious money into this game and it's just taking up ~50GB of space.

DXDIAG is attached for reference. 

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@kenanga3177  When you disabled everything you could reach in the Task Manager, did that include all your Razer software?  A couple different components are crashing, so much so that these crashes have crowded out any other errors in your dxdiag.  If ending these processes doesn't or didn't help, please try playing in a clean boot:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10

This is in some ways more thorough than simply killing services in the Task Manager, but you'll still want to go through the TM again after rebooting to shut down anything that might still be running, for example RGB software or a program like MSI Afterburner.

If that doesn't help either, please look for a relevant crash dump.  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 there is no related .dmp file, you can enable them:

• Hit the Windows key, type "command prompt" in the box, right-click on Command Prompt in the search results, and select Run as Administrator
• In the window, paste "reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\devenv.exe" /v DumpType /d 2 /t REG_DWORD" without the outside quotes into the box, and enter
• Launch Sims 4 and wait for it to crash (whether you can play at all or not)
• After it crashes, wait for any crash dialogs to finish
• Then hit Windows key-R and paste "%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps" without quotes into the box, and enter
• Upload the last .dmp file to a free filesharing site and link it here
• When you want to undo the auto crash log dumps, open Command Prompt as before, paste "reg delete "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /f" without the outside quotes, and enter.

During all of this, please continue to use a clean Sims 4 user folder, just so that there aren't any complicating factors.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@kenanga3177  When you disabled everything you could reach in the Task Manager, did that include all your Razer software?  A couple different components are crashing, so much so that these crashes have crowded out any other errors in your dxdiag.  If ending these processes doesn't or didn't help, please try playing in a clean boot:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10

This is in some ways more thorough than simply killing services in the Task Manager, but you'll still want to go through the TM again after rebooting to shut down anything that might still be running, for example RGB software or a program like MSI Afterburner.

If that doesn't help either, please look for a relevant crash dump.  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 there is no related .dmp file, you can enable them:

• Hit the Windows key, type "command prompt" in the box, right-click on Command Prompt in the search results, and select Run as Administrator
• In the window, paste "reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\devenv.exe" /v DumpType /d 2 /t REG_DWORD" without the outside quotes into the box, and enter
• Launch Sims 4 and wait for it to crash (whether you can play at all or not)
• After it crashes, wait for any crash dialogs to finish
• Then hit Windows key-R and paste "%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps" without quotes into the box, and enter
• Upload the last .dmp file to a free filesharing site and link it here
• When you want to undo the auto crash log dumps, open Command Prompt as before, paste "reg delete "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /f" without the outside quotes, and enter.

During all of this, please continue to use a clean Sims 4 user folder, just so that there aren't any complicating factors.

[kenanga3177]

@puzzlezaddict So I ended up doing a fresh re-install of Windows and now it works. What is the reasoning for disabling Razer software? Is it a new or old issue?

[puzzlezaddict]

@kenanga3177  Back in November, a number of people reported the same symptoms as you had, and their dxdiags showed exactly the same Sims 4 errors.  After a little troubleshooting, the source was narrowed down to Razer software, and since then, people who show up with the same error codes have been able to solve it by disabling whatever Razer services they have running.

Because the frequency of the issue, or at least the frequency of reports on this site, declined dramatically after a few weeks, I thought that perhaps Razer had resolved it in an update, hence the suggestion to try manually updating if killing the services helped.  But I haven't looked into the issue beyond trying to identify the problem software, so I have no idea what the underlying cause is or how it would have been addressed.  I just know what's worked for other players and that software updates sometimes fail or get blocked and need to be run manually.

Reinstalling Windows is pretty drastic and is almost never necessary.  Still, I'm glad your issue is fixed.