I took a break from playing Sims 3 and recently wanted to start playing it again. It was patched at 1.29 before I stopped playing and when coming back saw that patch 1.33 was out. Instead of reading about it, I went ahead and updated it. I tried running my game after that, but it crashes when starting up and from what I read, reinstalling is the only solution to this. Unfortunately, my sister has the base game and keeps forgetting to bring it with her every time she's came over.

I also have the Sims 3 on my laptop (patched at 1.26) and gotten an idea of copying the game on there and to use that to reinstall it to the other computer instead of using the game disk. I was wondering if this is a possible/safe alternative to reinstall the game.

You need to install from an original game disk.

The crash is more likely caused by CC than by the patch, however.