The Sims 3 launcher stopped working.

I see that a lot of people had a similar problem, I recently had to factory restore my comp and just got the sims 3 game and all ep/sps but the launcher and the other ways to get into game won't work..... i do have origins but before the restore it all worked fine... What should I do, also I am trying to install on an external hard drive....

did a clean install of games and now I'm getting: "There was an error during startup, please see the log for details" when i start the launcher....

soaringbird wrote:I see that a lot of people had a similar problem, I recently had to factory restore my comp and just got the sims 3 game and all ep/sps but the launcher and the other ways to get into game won't work..... i do have origins but before the restore it all worked fine... What should I do, also I am trying to install on an external hard drive....

did a clean install of games and now I'm getting: "There was an error during startup, please see the log for details" when i start the launcher....

Hello and welcome to the Forum @soaringbird,

That problem sounds familiar, and in my experience it will usually mean you have to purge (uninstall) everything and start afresh. A guide for that can be found in this topic here. If you want/need to install the game on a different drive than C: have a look at this here too:
https://games4theworld.forumotion.com/t19680-a-note-on-installing-the-sims-3-on-external-drives

Because if you don't prepare these install folders beforehand, it's going to install everything in just one pile, and if you then try 'organizing' the files after the installation, everything gets messed up.

Sorry I can't provide an easier solution, but good luck nonetheless!

thank you that helped.... i will do a clean installation and follow the directions for external hard drives...

soaringbird wrote:thank you that helped.... i will do a clean installation and follow the directions for external hard drives...

Take your time to do it carefully, and good luck again! Of course, feel free to keep us posted about your progress or any other follow-up issues. 

I followed the directions and it was working beautifully, but now i cant place any sims, houses or both in any worlds....

soaringbird wrote:I followed the directions and it was working beautifully, but now i cant place any sims, houses or both in any worlds....

Can you see the worlds/towns when you start a new game ?



Or is it completely blank ?
I had a simular problem before but not sure how I solved it. I think I installed Into the Future again.
Unfortunately I cannot reproduce the error so can't check.

i can see the towns when i start a new game, but just cant place the sims/houses/both in any worlds, new games or otherwise.....

soaringbird wrote:i can see the towns when i start a new game, but just cant place the sims/houses/both in any worlds, new games or otherwise.....

That's a tricky one as it can have many causes:
1. Use of mods/hacks/custom content
2. An irregular save of a previously played Sims game
3. Others

The best way to check 1 and 2 is to make a new The Sims 3 folder.
Go to user\Documents\Electronic Arts and rename the folder The Sims 3 to f.e. The Sims 3_old.
Now start your game again.
A new folder The Sims 3 will be created whereby you temporarily lost your own sims, houses aso.
Create a new Sim and see if you can move him/her into a world.
If yes, you can then bit by bit transfer items from your The Sims 3_old to the new folder The Sims 3

Ok I'll try that thx

soaringbird wrote:I followed the directions and it was working beautifully, but now i cant place any sims, houses or both in any worlds....

Well, by default you will have a fixed limit of household funds, so you may not be able to start with all the households (though I may be wrong on that one, in which case feel free to correct me). Are you able to start a new savegame with ANY of the default families?

Also try re-applying the (1.67) manual patch and Ultimate fix again. Then try the game once more.

sorry its been a few days, but now I'm getting the error: Service initialization failed 0x02957b48....

just uninstalled and reinstalled the base game and now it works beautifully...