Sims 4 randomly crashing

[Sophiebubblesxx]

I have been playing sims 4 since it came out basically, I have played it mostly on an old pc desktop computer up until a few months ago where the computer was just running too slowly and so i started to use my boyfriend iMac. All was well on both of those computers, having just moved all of my mods and save files from one computer to the other. 

i have now got a new gaming pc. i triple checked that the driver specs were good enough for sims, the hard drive has plenty of memory for sims and the graphics card it up to spec as well. I started a fresh with this new computer, not passing over any of my old saves or mods and it crashed as soon as i went into the gallery.  and then crashed again around 10 minutes into being in build mode. it has crashes again and again without fail now. sometimes it crashes with a white screen, sometimes it just freezes and im able to close the window and sometimes it crashes my whole computer. 

i have updated the drivers, i have "repaired" the game on origin. i have taken off all the newly downloaded cc and tried it with nothing on, ive opened the game in windowed mode, turned the graphic down.... literally everything i can think of to try and sort this. bare in mind i had no trouble playing on an old pc (albeit a little slow) and a mac before this when there was thousands of ccs on the game. 

the computer is able to play other games via stream for hours on end so i have no idea why Sims 4 and my computer are having so many issues. 

please help!! 

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Sophiebubblesxx  I apologize for the delay; I've been swamped the past couple days.  Anyway, I've looked at your hwinfo log, and while most of the readings look fine, there's one that stood out: the voltage of the PCIe slot where your graphics card is connected to the motherboard.

A desktop graphics card is built to work with 12 V, and anything below 11.9 could be an issue, although it isn't always.  However, as you can see, the voltage is consistently around 11.5 and drops even further towards the end of the log.  Not only could this account for the crashes, it's highly likely that your card isn't responding well to this.  If other voltages are as inconsistent, other components may be similarly affected.

This isn't definitive proof that the issue is your power supply—for one thing, the PSU's stats aren't in the log, perhaps because the unit doesn't have the proper sensors.  So the issue could theoretically be elsewhere.  Still, the PSU is a good place to start.  If you can, borrow a unit from a friend or family member, at least for a couple days or so, at least long enough to test.

Your graphics card doesn't require that much power: a 350W PSU should be fine for testing.  If you want to run hwinfo again with a new unit in place, feel free to upload a new log for me to read.  If this power supply is as old as the processor, you may want to start to think about replacing it anyway, although it's still better to find out for sure whether a new PSU helps.

[puzzlezaddict]

@Sophiebubblesxx  Starting now, please test the game only in a clean user data folder.  Even though you've removed your mods and custom content, it's still more thorough to use a clean folder.  Move your existing Sims 4 folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, and a clean folder will spawn the next time you launch the game.  Don't add anything to it; just use a new save for testing.

If you get another crash in the clean folder, please run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

https://help.ea.com/en/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

Please also let me know whether there's any pattern to the crashes, for example if they always happen when you send your sims traveling.

[Sophiebubblesxx]

HI! @puzzlezaddict 

thanks for your suggestion, it still crashed after about 10 minutes of playing a new game (with my folder taken out and a new one spawned in) unfortunately. 

attatched is the DxDiag file, see if you or anyone else can solve the case, really apprechiate the help!

thanks !!

[puzzlezaddict]

@Sophiebubblesxx  Your dxdiag lists one crash of the graphics driver, so it's a good idea to update the driver.  You can find a newer one here:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/163531/en-us

Don't run it through GeForce Experience, if you have it installed.  Instead, download the driver separately, run it as an admin (right-click on the installer and select "Run as administrator), select the Custom option, and then do a clean install.

Your dxdiag also lists a number of update failures.  So it's a good idea to run a couple of basic checks on your Windows system files, then manually run any pending updates.

• 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

Restart your computer, hit Windows key-i, select Update & Security, and click the button to check for updates.  Restart again before trying to play.

If the game crashes again, look for related entries in the Reliability Monitor.  Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes.  You'll see a list of errors and updates, with a column for each day.  (Today is all the way on the right.)

Look for any errors that mention Origin or Sims 4, or that happened when you were trying to play; you don't need to include anything from before you did the steps above.  For any new ones, click "View technical details," then copy the information and paste it into a text document.  (Notepad is fine.)  You can attach the file to a post as you did with your dxdiag.  Sometimes the Reliability Monitor doesn't update right away, so if you don't see any related errors, be sure to check back an hour or two.  The timestamp on the initial chart can also be off by up to an hour, so that's not an entirely reliable metric, but the one within the technical details should be accurate.

[Sophiebubblesxx]

@puzzlezaddict 

thanks done all the steps you advised. attatched is the message i recieved after doing the powershell scans. 

going to play the game now and i have all my fingers and toes crossed!! thanks for all your help 

[Sophiebubblesxx]

@puzzlezaddict 

it crashed again, only thing i could see was a hardware error, attatched the information if gave. i'll check back with it tomorrow to see if there is another update to it more relavent to origin or sims

[puzzlezaddict]

@Sophiebubblesxx  That's the same hardware error, specifically a timeout of the video driver, that was in your dxdiag.  Given that simply updating the driver didn't help, it's a good idea to do a clean uninstall and reinstall.  Here's how.

Download Display Driver Uninstaller from here:

https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3277

Get a fresh copy (don't use the old one) of the Nvidia driver here:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/163531/en-us

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 launch 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; make sure the box in red is checked:

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:

In the blue box, choose GPU, then Nvidia if it's not already showing.  Then click Clean and Restart (red box).

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.

Reboot again, go back online, and see whether the game works normally.  If you get another crash, please post whatever you find in the Reliability Monitor, as you did this last time.

[Sophiebubblesxx]

@puzzlezaddict

did everything you told me to do and its still crashing, nothing on the reliability monitor though, only coming up with "windows was unexpectedly shut down" no hardware errors.

tried doing stress tests on the driver etc but everything seemed within the normal parameters.

any more advice ?

thanks again for all your help

[puzzlezaddict]

@Sophiebubblesxx  It would be useful to do some hardware monitoring on your system.  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 it crashes.  Click the same button to end logging, that is if the game crash doesn't also crash your computer.  (Even if the computer crashes, the log should be intact up until that point.)  Then 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.

[Sophiebubblesxx]

@puzzlezaddict Hey! Sorry it took a while to reply, I’ve been playing the sims for about an hour now and everything seems to be working! I have the downloaded hardware monitoring software running while I’m playing so if it does crash I’ll let you know what it says!

So far so good though! Thanks for all your help!