Very Bad Crash Problem - Never Experienced this Before!

I have the base game, as well as Generations, World Adventures, Ambitions, and Pets. I've lost my Pets disc but wanted to play, so I downloaded 70s, 80s and 90s stuff and the seasons expansion yesterday and installed them. I started to play after that and while starting up the game my screen would just go black. I couldn't do anything, couldn't ctrl-alt-del my way out of it, or anything. I had to hold down my power button to shut off my laptop and start up again.
I downloaded the manual patch and the universal fix and after that the problem seemed to go away.

Today, though, I played for an hour and it happened. I just tried again and no more than 5 minutes after I started playing it happened again! I'm not sure what's going on. Should I just keep doing the universal fix? The game only worked glitch free(ish) once, though, so is that something I should do every time? :/

Not sure if this is related or not, but Origin hasn't been able to connect with my game launcher for months. I've contacted EA/Origin several times about this, and they've been unable to fix it - just told me to use manual patches.

It isn't about launcher but it seems a serious crash. Maybe one of the games files is corrupted.

But the base game and the other game you had before installing the new ones, are they original? Different kind of base games can conflict with other EP sometimes. And do you have any mods installed in your game?

If your game crashes to desktop, try this.

phoebethetwilightprincess wrote:It isn't about launcher but it seems a serious crash. Maybe one of the games files is corrupted.

But the base game and the other game you had before installing the new ones, are they original? Different kind of base games can conflict with other EP sometimes. And do you have any mods installed in your game?

Nope, no mods. I deleted those way back when I first started having the Origin problems.

All of my games are the original disc versions, aside from Seasons and 70s, 80s, 90s.

Also - I'm not sure if my game is considered to be crashing to desktop, because when it crashes my screen goes black and I can't do anything at all. I've read through some other threads and some have mentioned game card issues but when I got this laptop I made sure my game card could handle it because I've had issues with that before. I've had the computer and have been playing the game for a year and a half now, so I don't think that's the problem. My C drive also has plenty of space left - 223gb.

Another question I have is before I found this site I tried a few others...those game downloads are in my downloads folder,not the EA folder, so that couldn't be affecting it at all, could it? I tried to go through and delete them but I don't want to delete something I need by accident! After I install everything though, do I need the original download files?

Update: I think I made things worse, somehow. I installed the manual patch again, and was going to try to apply the universal fix again, as well. But when I try to move the files over, it tells me it can't be completed because they're open elsewhere, which I don't understand because they aren't.
Now when I start my launcher it asks me for a disc, which is why I went through with those steps again. I backed up and deleted my Sims 3 folder in Documents/Electronic Arts before doing this, as the link posted earlier had suggested.

I'm afraid to move on because I don't want to make things worse than they are. What should I do next, and am I doing something wrong?!
At this point, should I delete the two expansions I downloaded from here and install them all over again? If so, how do I go about it so they're completely gone before I continue?

I had done the removing the folder part, and did the DEP. Still crashes.
I noticed when doing that that some of my Bin folders had more .exe files than others. Is that normal? I'm starting to worry that I messed things up further when I was messing around with the universal fix. I have duplicates in some games, I think.

I'm also getting a game disc error when I open the launcher...it tells me I need the disc to play. I used the Starter Application to get around this - usually that doesn't work, but it did this time, miraculously.

To check for duplicates, look for .exe files that look the same, but one has (1) after the name.
If this is the case, then you might not have replaced the files correctly, and this might be your problem...

Just got this problem recently . It crash then black screen of death . Couldn't do anything but restart .

fankalol wrote:Just got this problem recently . It crash then black screen of death . Couldn't do anything but restart .

Hello,

Please open a new thread IF you can't find the solutions on the forum.

Phoebe wrote:

fankalol wrote:Just got this problem recently . It crash then black screen of death . Couldn't do anything but restart .

Hello,

Please open a new thread IF you can't find the solutions on the forum.

I think i just solved my black screen of death problem . Not sure if its 100% fix . Imma try to play it later to see if i get the black screen again .

I had this Black screen of death issue before, I just uninstalled the sims and reinstalled, seemed to have fixed it, don't forget to delete the EA folders and files that get left behind, sure it's a pain in the ass to do, if only there was a quicker way, however IT should give you hours and hours of fun.

MAKE SURE to follow and double check the fixes when placing them and do not rush it

About your Pets lost disc issue, if you still got the serial number you may be able to get it to work via EA origen,

I wish I could do the uninstall and reinstall, but unfortunately I'm out of town so all of my Sims discs are at my apartment and I won't be back for a couple of weeks still :/

The Origin thing would be great if my Origin was working, lol. Well, it works, but the game launcher for some reason can't connect with it.

Lady ElDi wrote:Hello,

Go to Documents\Electronic Arts and backup and remove the The Sims 3 folder, and see if your game starts normally. It's like a factory reset.
How about the disc error?

I did this and it didn't seem to do anything to help me...I had high hopes for it. Now I need to figure out how to get my game back in there once I do finally get this fixed

Hello,

Did you make a backup of the folder you removed, as Lady ElDi suggested? If yes, then you can find your savegames in the "Saves" folder.

Admin wrote:Hello,

Did you make a backup of the folder you removed, as Lady ElDi suggested? If yes, then you can find your savegames in the "Saves" folder.

I did. I moved the folder of the saved game I wanted into the Saved folder that is in the current Sims 3 folder, but when I started the game it didn't work. It showed me there was a game, but I couldn't use it because there was something missing it said.