just bought a new laptop with with windows ten, installed sims 3 no problem and all expansions. tried to run it and got: a required security module cannot be activated. this program cannot be executed (8016) error message.
googled it and tried installing updates, patching the game, uninstalling all expansions and just trying the base game, running it with no mods, uninstalling everything and reinstalling just the base game no mods. stopped all background services from startup. tried to disable securom: (cmd rd /s %appdata%/securom)

it's an alienware windows 10, intelcore i7, nvidia gefore gtx 970m graphics.

sims 3 worked no problem on my last alienware windows 7 perfectly so this sucks, hoping you guys can help.

yeah updating the bios is my next step. so next question. i have an alienware 17 r3 but in the bios it says alienware 15 r 2
the bios update file says 17 r3 but will it mess it up if the bios says 15 r2?

Well, if you update the bios with 17 r3 it's definitely going to erase the 15 r2, I don't know much about Alienware but if it can be done with software under windows (instead directly from the bios menu), it's safer doing it with software under windows, because it will check your new bios 17 r3 file first if it is the correct one to update the current one.

In your case since it has windows 10 installed when you bought it, and I assumed you have the windows 10 product key number COA sticker on your laptop, I would suggest to have fresh and clean new install of windows 10 in spare hard disk instead of messing with the bios unless you're sure that was the real cause, if you can do this, don't activate your windows 10 just yet, make sure you have all the latest drivers required to run windows 10, test everything you want to have (including TS3) to run in your system first, after everything works properly then go ahead activate your copy of windows 10. This should avoid compatibility issue that occurred compared to upgrading it from windows 7 or 8 or 8.1, because some might be incompatible when your system upgraded to windows 10, such as daemon tools and etc.

That's what I found when upgrading my laptop from windows 7 to 10, so many things that I have to removed manually before I can I upgrade it because of incompatibility issues, windows 10 is still quite new so I don't think we could have all the answers we are looking for each trouble that occurred, I even test installing windows 10 in my PC with fresh installation and it causing my PC overheating for just browsing the web..

But the good thing is, we can have it free, it's free to download, it don't have limitation 30 days trial like in win 7, so we can try it before deciding to migrate via upgrade or even buy new keys for full clean installation of windows 10, I heard that we can use win 7 or 8 or 8.1 keys to activate windows 10 but I haven't try it yet as I'm still learning it, for sure it is fast, it pushed my hardware to work full throttle because I tested it with my old spare 80gb hdd that's why my PC gets overheated.., but I've got to say windows 10 is awesome with SSD, it's only took about 5-10s to get logged in to windows from dead start :D