It's no use, I going to have to post this here, even at the risk of a appearing an utter noob, because this has me totally baffled. I know that a lot of people have had problems getting the game to install on Windows 10 machines, or with the game crashing, but I've not found any mention of a similar problem to mine.

I recently bought a new laptop, running Windows 10. The machine I am using at the moment runs Windows 7 (which I much prefer) but it is getting on a bit and might expire any time now. So I decided I would set up Sims 3 on the new machine in exactly the same way as on this one, same EP's, same SPs, same mods and CC. Then, when the time comes, I can move all my back ups over to the new machine. That was the plan.

Well I got the game and all its expansions installed and everything seems fine and, if I had never heard of mods and was content to play the vanilla game, I wouldn't be posting this, I would be perfectly happy. The trouble is as soon as I put all my mods and saved games back in, transferring them from my external drive, the saves won't load. The green loading bar just goes up till its nearly full and just stops there forever. I can tell when its frozen because the game tips stop changing. If I take the mods folder out again my old saves will load, although of course I get a message about objects being missing, because there's a lot of CC in that folder too.

I've gone through that mods folder a couple of times trying to eliminate anything that might be causing it, but if those mods are working fine on this old machine they ought to work on the new one too, the operating system shouldn't make any difference. That's what I've been given to understand, any way.

There is another problem I ought to mention, which may or may not be related: when I do successfully load a save, and try to quit without saving, the game won't shut down, I just get that revolving thing going on forever and I have to use Task Manager to shut things down.

Any help or advice on how to lick this problem would be very much appreciated.

ADDITIONAL: Without the mods folder in I started a new game, played it for a little and then saved. No problems saving, and this time the game shut down normally. It re-loaded okay without mods, but didn't with the mods.

Are you patched to the same level on both computers? Check the gameversion and build code in [install location]\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\skuversion.txt for both computers.

Just checked that. Yes, they're both the same.

I'm presently going on the theory that something got corrupted in transit, from this machine to my external drive and then to the new computer. I have just removed all the actual mods from the folder, leaving only CC packages and the saves loaded fine. I'm now going to put things back, one at a time, and see what, if anything, stops the loading. A slow and tedious process, but its the only idea I have.

Instead of one at a time, may I suggest a more efficient 50/50 method? Put half of your mods back in, making sure not to include only half of a co-dependent pair if you have any like that (e.g., some of the NRaas add-on modules). If the problem reoccurs, remove half of what you put in, if not then put in half of what remains. Proceed backwards and forwards by remaining halves until you isolate the culprit(s). Even if you have hundreds or more mod files, this should speed up the troubleshooting process immensely.

Thanks for the advice. I'm doing something similar, dividing them up into batches of a dozen or so. I note what you say about keeping paired mods together in the same batch, I think that's where I messed up before. I have 'Pose Player' for example and also 'Pose Player Add On': if you put the latter in without the first it can crash the game. I'm temporarily excluding other mods that aren't that important, just to speed things up.

EDIT: Well, I don't know whether to delete this thread to cover my embarrassment, or let it stand as a warning to numskulls.

I went through the elimination process, till eventually I had all the original mods back in. I had a couple of notices come up that 'Sims 3 has stopped working etc', but I think that was due to making the mistake Igazor mentioned about interdependent mods. because, when I had everything in, the save loaded, although it took a helluva long time to do it. In fact I only discovered that because I got called away to attend to something else, otherwise I'd have shut things down and gone away more baffled than ever.

The problem might have been with a small number of mods that I had already decided to discard anyway but, discounting that, I must conclude that the new machine is just too darned SLOW. The game is playing, but it is pausing a lot, just like my old desktop, which only had 2Gb RAM. I think I must abandon my idea of making everything identical to the other laptop. Some fat will have to be trimmed!

Thanks simsample and Igazor for taking the trouble to try and help, and sorry for wasting your time.

EDIT 2: Oh no, no, NO! This doesn't make any sense at all! All I did was rearrange everything, putting things back into their proper folders and now I'm getting the "Sims 3 has stopped working" thing again! I've done that many times before and its made no difference. What is going on here?

Hmm. Is this happening on attempted newly started up games as well, or only on trying to run saves brought forward from the prior install? Might also want to try a clean folder run at this point, even though it's a new install.

And on the horrible performance when you can get things to load, we are at some point going to ask about this new laptop's specs. A Device Config log, the first 40 lines or so but you can stop when it gets to the Game Option settings, pasted in under Spoiler tags might a good place to begin.

I think if you can run and load your saved game normally with all your CCs and Mods installed in your older Win 7 laptop, then you should have any problem that preventing you to do the same thing in your new win 10 laptop (if both of the two laptops's spec are similar or the new one is better or more powerful), so I think it doesn't have anything to do with your CCs/Mods, in fact you can just put copy your whole TS3 docs folder from your old laptop to the new one (except for DeviceConfig.log and Option.ini files because these two are computer's spec related), I suspect it's more computer's specs issue related or something might be missing from your Win 10 side.. not from your TS3 side..

If you can post your DeviceConfig and screenshot from your Device Manager showing how Win 10 recognized your graphics cards(s) and showing how its ATA/ATAPI (storage) controller configured (especially if your system is installed in SSD), it'll be easier to locate the root of the problem and find the solution to fix them..

I've put DeviceConfig under a spoiler, I take it you don't need to see all that stuff under Options:


As for Device Manager, does this show you what you need to see?


Sorry if this is not what you mean, I confess to not being very technically minded.

Sorry Elynda, first there's nothing wrong with your Win 10 recognizing your new Win 10 devices laptop, but I assumed your old laptop is just much more powerful than your new one, I'm sorry but I have to say that your new Win 10 laptop is pretty much in the same class as this Celeron, yours are just simply newer generation, but pretty much in the same class, you can check them both here for comparison, both are not recommended for gaming, I don't know about your Celeron N2840 but the Celeron 1007U are not even recommended for video encoding with its Intel HD 2500 graphic according to the site.

How about the spec in your old laptop then, maybe if you can post that one too? If the old one's specs are far more better/powerful than your newer one (since you said you don't have any problem playing TS3 in your old laptop), the only cheap solution is have it refund (if it's possible and you feel want to refund it), or just.. swap the SSD or the hard drive and call Microsoft to re-active your Win 10 copy to your old laptops, or if you have the Win 10 serial number from the COA sticker attached to your new laptop and you have Win 10 installer disc/media, just install your Win 10 in your old laptop and activate it online (but you have to remove your Win 10 first from the new one, otherwise it won't work when activating it online).

Here you are then:





This old crock of a HP laptop knocks spots of anything I've ever played Sims 3 on in terms of performance. I'd be quite happy, if I wasn't afraid it was going to die on me pretty soon. There is something wrong that makes it hard to change the screen resolution (from within Sims 3) without getting a grey screen, and some of the keyboard legends are faded to near invisibility (luckily I learned touch typing long ago and I don't have to look at them much). I should look around and see if I can find another like it second hand, or something with similar specs, but in better condition.

As for the Asus, it may be 'new' in terms of age, but it was bought second hand. I had a feeling you were going to tell me it wasn't up to the task, since when it did load the game it was painfully slow. I think I shall just keep it for Photoshop and Word Processing.

Thanks for your help and advice.

No it won't die on you just like that, it may be old, but not that old, and it's an i5 (the 1st gen of Core i5 ), and its Intel HD graphic is also at the same level with the old Nvidia GeForce 8400GS, that's why you're happy with its performance, so I'd say keep this one, if you want to put some money, buy this one an SSD with more rams and put Win 10 in it.., but I don't know about the grey screen without having it look by myself, but according to your DeviceConfig and Device Manager, everything is fine too, maybe try this resolution 1366x768 or 1360x768 with refresh rate 60Hz at the TS3 main menu, that's the standard for 13-14 inch LCD screen..

And as for the N2840, I don't think Photoshop will perform as you expected to be, put the Photoshop on the i5 too in my opinion..

That's very encouraging news about the 'Old Crock'. It's been a pleasure to work with it, apart from a few little hiccups. In addition to making my sim story project a lot easier, I've actually been enjoying actually playing the game for the first time in ages. The Nvidia GeForce 8400GS is exactly what I had on my old desktop, and that did a great job with Sims 3 and my other favourite game, 'Mount and Blade'. The display problem seemed to settle down once I'd got Sims 3 matched to the monitor's native resolution (1366x768). I shan't be touching any display settings again.

I am not sure about Windows 10 though, I feel in my comfort zone with 7 (just as I once was with XP)

Anyways thank you for explaining all that stuff for me and for taking the time to help.

EDIT: @igazor

Sorry, I did not notice your post above PapaEmy's till now. I was using the new test save I had made in Sunset Valley, I didn't try any of the older saves many of which wouldn't have worked anyway because I had not yet installed the worlds they used, only Riverview and Riverblossom Hills. I couldn't start new saves in any.

As you can see I posted the specs of both machines and PapaEmy has given me both the good news and the bad. Thanks to you also for taking an interest.