black screen with music and cursor

[hannabatat]

Hi team, when i run Sims 4 - a black screen with cursor comes up and music.

from previous notes i tried 32 bit, also tried origin game removed and deleted files, re-installed and tested compatibility and my systems seems to have minimum.

can you please check this and see if there is anything you can detect? ta

[puzzlezaddict]

@hannabatat  There are a few different issues listed in your dxdiag.  It's best to first deal with the easy ones.  The Origin Web Helper Service has crashed repeatedly, so disable it.  In Origin, hover over your username, select Application Settings; under Application (the first header), scroll down to Start-up options and click to disable the service.  Then hit Windows key-R and enter "services.msc" without quotes.  Scroll through the list to Origin Web Helper Service, double-click, select "Disabled" under Startup type, and click Apply to save the change.

Next, run a couple of checks on your Windows system files.  Here's how:

• 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

Finally, pull your entire Sims 4 game folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts; you can put it on your desktop.  When you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Let me know whether you can start a new save and play for a bit in this folder.

If none of this helps, the issue is likely your graphics card driver.  You actually have two drivers, one for the Intel chip (integrated into the processor) that's currently being used, and one for a Radeon card that is currently disabled.  It's difficult to find the right driver page for HP laptops without the serial number.  So please go to this page:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/laptops

enter the laptop's serial number, and you'll land on the driver page for your model of laptop.  If you link the page here, I can see whether there's a better graphics driver available.  Or if you're comfortable doing so, you can find the right driver yourself.  Either way, the Intel graphics driver is from 2012, and if the game doesn't run after the easy fixes are applied, the driver is likely the issue.

[hannabatat]

For Powershell:

Error: 740

Elevated permissions are required to run DISM.
Use an elevated command prompt to complete these tasks.

[puzzlezaddict]

@hannabatat  It sounds like you chose the regular PowerShell option, not the one with elevated permissions.  Please be sure to specifically select the option labeled "PowerShell (Administrator)," which is directly under the other PowerShell option.