Basically being on windows 10 i have been having a few issues with sims XD and am having to run in compatibility mode, when i press the windows button to minimize the game to view my say google, the screen is extremely bright and washed out :L Anyone know what might cause it? Thanks

Well, two things.

1 - Don't run in Compat Mode. I know that's totally circular reasoning since I am sure you are doing so to fix some other problem but it does tend to cause all kinds of glitches like this. Is Compat Mode really necessary?

2 - Don't minimize the screen that way. I always used to (Win 7 though) and my game would crash when trying to bring it back up around 1 out of every 50 times. Pause your game, change to windowed mode (alt+enter), and hit the "-" widget to send the game down to the taskbar. When ready to resume playing, bring the game back up, return to fullscreen mode (alt+enter), and continue. An NRaas colleague convinced me to change my habits like this a year ago and, although the extra steps are a pain, I haven't had a single crash or graphics glitch from doing it this way since.

To be honest I don't think I can play the game with out compatibility mode thats why I'm using it :/

Just tried running without compatibility mode, it just crashes

I see from another thread that you have a GTX 960. @nitromon gave you some excellent advice and things to try there. But I'm going to have to guess that you have video card, monitor, and/or other drivers that either need updating (Win 10 kicks up the need for lots of updates apparently) or have received an update that they shouldn't have. I know that's really vague and doesn't quite tell you what to do, move backwards or forwards, but it does seem that most players on that combination (video card and Win 10) manage to get it working without having to resort to Compat Mode.

My graphics card drivers are all up to date, as for monitor I'm on a laptop so not really sure how that all works XD what other drivers may i need to update? Am very new to windows 10 lol, I just want to say that I can play using windowed mode on windows 10 without using compatibility so far, but i am not keen on windowed mode.

Yeah, and in windowed mode your frame rate won't be limited properly as it would be in full-screen.

All I can do, I'm afraid, is echo what others have stated in that sometimes driver updates have to come from the computer manufacturer, not that of the card or other device, in order to work properly. It could be that you need to roll one back (but don't put too much stock in that since this is not my field of expertise really). Hopefully one of the other helpful folks here will have a sensible suggestion; getting a seven year old game now way out of development to work on current hardware is always a challenge.

A "band-aid" would be to keep manually adjusting brightness and contrast on your display every time you window in and out of your game.
And that can be a real pain.

Or use the "switch to Windowed mode for exiting, and then back to Fullscreen when you return" method that igazor suggested, which looks like it's much less of a pain.

I cant use windowed mode in compatibility and the extra washed out screen starts as soon as i click play, the game looks fine but the desktop is all washy :L What do you mean by " Ban-aid"? Its ashame theres no way of me playing on windows 10 in fullscreen without tears or crashes

I suddenly could no longer minimize by using the "windows key" in my Win 10. I searched and searched for a solution. Finally, I found that my keyboard (gaming compatible) has a key at the very top used for joystick mode. I must have moved it over accidentally. You cannot minimize in joystick mode (an option when playing certain games). The moment I slid it back over, voila, I am again able to minimize Sims 3 as I used to. Hopefully that helps someone else.

I don't think you understand my problem lol. Basically I can't play sims 3 in windows 10 unless using windowed mode so I am playing in compatibility mode for windows 7 so i can play in full screen, it works great so far its just horrible to look at my desktop or facebook, google etc.