Sims 4 crashes immediately after pushing play following Nov 12, 2019 update

[bodaccia]

My game was running fine, saved and closed out in order to update. Update went without a hitch. Removed mods folder as per usual before update. Then tried to open game but it crashed. tried twice more, same. So I renamed my game 'ts41', and generated an all new game file. Still crashed. I then went to my pc app menu, uninstalled The Sims 4 and Origin. I then restarted my PC. REinstalled Origin and TS4. Still crashed 3 more times. Have a 64 bit system on WIN 10 with 16 gigs of RAM, an Nvidia Geforce graphics card and 2 TB of storage available. Please advise.

To reiterate; 1st attempt, removed mods but save and tray folders were still present

Subsequent attempts, game crashed immediately with no saves, no trays and no mods.No load screen, just Play to crash.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@bodaccia  The Sims 4 crashes in your dxdiag all list the Nvidia driver.  So a good place to start would be to update the driver.  There's a new one that was just released yesterday.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/153944/en-us

Please also make sure that Windows is up to date.  Click the Windows icon in the lower left corner of your screen and select Settings > Updates & Security, then click Check for Updates.

If you still get crashes, the more thorough intervention is a clean uninstall and reinstall of the driver.  First, download Display Driver Uninstaller from here:

https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2351

Use the same new driver linked above.

Next, take your computer completely offline—disable wifi and/or pull the ethernet cord—and double-click the DDU.exe.  Take note of where the file will land, and click Extract.  If it's easier, you can copy the path and then paste it into the address bar in a File Explorer window.  Open the folder and then Display Driver Uninstaller.exe, and you'll get a message that you're not in Safe Mode.  Click OK, then go to Options and enable Safe Mode dialog.  Here's a screenshot of what your options should look like:

Close options, and the DDU, and then open the DDU.exe again.  For launch options, choose "Safe Mode (Recommended)," and then click Reboot to Safe Mode (you'll need your password, so find it before rebooting).  Once you login, you'll see this:

Choose GPU in the dropdown menu (step one), then Nvidia (step 2) if it's not already showing.  Then click Clean and Restart (step 3).

Once your computer has rebooted, now back in normal mode, run the driver install .exe in custom mode. Select "perform a clean installation" and install ONLY the GPU driver and the PHYSX software.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@bodaccia  The Sims 4 crashes in your dxdiag all list the Nvidia driver.  So a good place to start would be to update the driver.  There's a new one that was just released yesterday.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/153944/en-us

Please also make sure that Windows is up to date.  Click the Windows icon in the lower left corner of your screen and select Settings > Updates & Security, then click Check for Updates.

If you still get crashes, the more thorough intervention is a clean uninstall and reinstall of the driver.  First, download Display Driver Uninstaller from here:

https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2351

Use the same new driver linked above.

Next, take your computer completely offline—disable wifi and/or pull the ethernet cord—and double-click the DDU.exe.  Take note of where the file will land, and click Extract.  If it's easier, you can copy the path and then paste it into the address bar in a File Explorer window.  Open the folder and then Display Driver Uninstaller.exe, and you'll get a message that you're not in Safe Mode.  Click OK, then go to Options and enable Safe Mode dialog.  Here's a screenshot of what your options should look like:

Close options, and the DDU, and then open the DDU.exe again.  For launch options, choose "Safe Mode (Recommended)," and then click Reboot to Safe Mode (you'll need your password, so find it before rebooting).  Once you login, you'll see this:

Choose GPU in the dropdown menu (step one), then Nvidia (step 2) if it's not already showing.  Then click Clean and Restart (step 3).

Once your computer has rebooted, now back in normal mode, run the driver install .exe in custom mode. Select "perform a clean installation" and install ONLY the GPU driver and the PHYSX software.

[carlydunham]

do you  have   any mods many mods/cc are/could be broken in the latest  patch

[bodaccia]

First, thanks a lot for responding. Second, the uninstaller says it only works on Win 10 up to the May 2019 update?       Requirement:
-Windows Vista SP2 up to Windows 10 May 2019 update 1903 (18362.xx) (anything higher is at your own risk)
-NVIDIA, AMD, Intel GPUs
-Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 or higher

[bodaccia]

@carlydunham As I stated in my post, no mods or cc. Thanks tho

[puzzlezaddict]

@bodaccia  You have the October 2018 (1809) build of Windows 10, so you're fine.  But it turns out I hadn't updated the link; there's a slightly newer version of DDU available here:

https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2421

By the way, I double-checked HP's driver page for your laptop, and there aren't any reasonably new graphics card drivers for your particular processor, which is why I linked the Intel download.  If you can't run it though, let me know, and I'll double-check whether the new driver HP provides for slightly different hardware would also work for your system.  (The Intel driver is the same for both, but HP might have tweaked the version it provides.)

[bodaccia]

@puzzlezaddict Thanks again for your help, but I have a Pc, not a laptop. Don't know if that makes a difference?

[puzzlezaddict]

@bodaccia  Sorry, I had two threads with driver issues open at the same time, and I meant to tell the other person about HP's restrictive driver policy.  (This morning was kind of insane.  I probably should have slowed down and taken a breath at some point.)  You're fine just downloading the Nvidia driver directly from Nvidia.