Installed Sims 3 Pets and can't launch game [ Edited ]

[ojsimmer]

So I've been playing the Sims 3 off my MacBook Pro (OS X El Capitan) for over a year now and I've never had any problems. Over that time, I have installed and played Supernatural, Ambitions, Late Night, Seasons, and Island Paradise with no problems at all. I also have several mods installed and a lot of custom content. I just installed the Pets expansion and tried to open the game, but this message comes up.

Failed to create symlink

/Applications/The Sims 3.localized/The Sims3.app/Contents/Resources/AddOns/The Sims 3 Island Paradise.app/Contents/Resources/transgaming/c_drive/Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 Pets -> ../../../../../../../The Sims 3 Pets.app/Contents/Resources/transgaming/c_drive/Program Files/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 Pets

I've looked up a bunch of stuff and followed directions to manually uninstall Pets and all its stuff, but when I try to launch the game the same message comes up. Also, even before trying to manually uninstall Pets, I tried to use the Sims 3 Uninstaller tool thing and Pets didn't even show up on the list. Don't know if that's relevant or not but hey it can't hurt right? I'm kind of desperate, and I've seen stuff that says to wipe all the Sims 3 related stuff from my computer, but I have a lot of worlds and sims that I really love. Is there any way I can fix this without having to delete my worlds?

Please help! Thank you.

[puzzlezaddict]

Even if you end up having to uninstall the entire game from your computer, you can preserve your saves, saved sims, library, etc.  Just drag your Sims 3 folder out of Documents and place it somewhere safe, like on your desktop with a new name.  This is also a good troubleshooting step for you right now, before you go through the drastic and time-consuming step of uninstalling everything.  When you launch again, the game will be forced to spawn a fresh folder with no content.  If you can launch and play (for at least an hour), then you can start adding back content from your old folder, a little at a time.  If you then run into trouble after adding something back, you know what's causing the problem.

I'm not sure which set of instructions you followed to uninstall the Pets EP, but there are a number of transgaming files that can remain on a computer after an uninstall is supposedly complete.  Here is a thorough list of what to delete:

https://bluebellflora.com/manually-uninstalling-an-expansion-or-stuff-pack-in-the-sims-3-for-mac/

Just a note, Pets is in some ways the most resource-intensive EP of all.  Depending on your computer's specs, it might not be able to handle the demands of the pack.  And even the best macs are limited to using 2 GB RAM at a time when running TS3, which is really not enough to run Pets properly for any significant amount of time.  Add in Seasons and IP, the second- and third-most demanding packs, and you might be asking far more of your computer than it is capable of doing.

If you're still having issues, please post your computer's specs here for more specific help.