How to Fix The Sims 4 Crashing On Startup

When it comes to life simulation video games, The Sims 4 is one of the popular life simulation genre games released way back in 2014 and available for almost all gaming platforms. However, no video game is bug-free, and the same is applicable for The Sims 4 too. Plenty of players are reporting that somehow they’re experiencing random crashes while launching the game on their PCs. If you’re also one of the victims, make sure to check out this troubleshooting guide on How to Fix The Sims 4 Crashing On Startup issue completely on your computer.

Having a couple of errors and some other performance issues in a game is common these days, and we all know that PC version games mostly occur multiple problems compared with the console version. As these are some of the most common issues for a PC gamer, there is no big deal. Luckily, by following some of the possible workarounds or steps, affected players can easily resolve the startup crashing issue by themselves. So, without getting further ado, let’s get into it.

Why The Sims 4 Crashes On Startup?

Starting off, there are some reasons behind the startup crashing of a PC game that you should know before heading over any methods. Even if you have a powerful gaming rig, PC games are prone to crashes or lags, or errors whatsoever. Now, you may ask what the reasons are. Well, the startup crashing can happen due to an outdated Windows OS version, an outdated game version, graphics drivers issue, hardware compatibility with the game, DirectX issue, and more. To take a closer look, check below:

1. Make sure that your PC configuration isn’t compatible with the game requirements. If you’re not sure about it, check the system requirements of the game below.
2. Next, maybe some background running tasks are causing system performance issues, and that’s why the game crashes at the startup.
3. It can also be possible that your game files are either missing or corrupted for some reason.
4. In most cases, an outdated Windows OS build, or even an outdated graphics driver version can occur crashing issues.
5. Check whether your DirectX version becomes outdated or not.
6. Sometimes an outdated graphics card may become incompatible with the Direct3D Hardware Feature Level 11.0 GPU.
7. Possibly your game or even the game client becomes outdated.
8. Maybe Windows Defender Firewall or any third-party antivirus program is causing preventing the game files from running properly.

Minimum System Requirements:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: 64 Bit Required. Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10
• Processor: 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon 64 Dual-Core 4000+ or equivalent (For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.0 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-62 or equivalent)
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: 128 MB of Video RAM and support for Pixel Shader 3.0. Supported Video Cards: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better, ATI Radeon X1300 or better, Intel GMA X4500 or better
• DirectX: Version 9.0
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 17 GB available space

Recommended System Requirements:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: 64 Bit Windows 7 (SP1), 8, 8.1, or 10
• Processor: Intel Core i5 or higher, AMD Athlon X4
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 650 or better
• DirectX: Version 9.0
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 18 GB available space

How to Fix The Sims 4 Crashing On Startup

Now, without wasting any more time, let’s jump into the steps below. Keep in mind that both the Nvidia and AMD graphics drivers are well optimized for The Sims 4 game. So, if in case you haven’t updated your graphics driver yet, do this first.

1. Update Graphics Drivers

If you’re using the Nvidia graphics card, update the GeForce Experience app on your PC from the Nvidia official site. But if you’re using the AMD graphics card on your system, then update the latest AMD Drivers from here.

2. Disable Steam Overlay

• Open Steam on your Windows.
• Head over to the Settings > Click on the In-Game.
• Click on the checkbox to disable Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game.
• Once the checkbox mark is removed, click on OK.

3. Adjust Discord Settings

• Launch Discord > Click on User Settings.
• Select Voice & Video from the left sidebar.
• Scroll down a bit and click on the Advanced.
• Next, disable OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco System, Inc.
• Then disable Enable Quality of Service High Packet Priority.
• Now, go to Overlay.
• You can also turn off the in-game overlay.
• Next, head over to Appearance.
• Go to Advanced.
• Disable Hardware Acceleration.
• Once done, restart the system.

4. Adjust Nvidia Control Panel Settings

• Click on Adjust image settings with preview under 3D settings.
• Select Use the advanced 3D image settings.
• Next, launch the Nvidia Control Panel.
• Click on Manage 3D settings> Go to Global Settings.
• Additionally, you can also adjust some of the other options:
  • Disable Image Sharpening
  • Enable Threaded Optimization
  • Use Maximum Performance for Power Management
  • Turn off Low Latency Mode
  • Set Texture Filtering Quality to Performance mode

5. Change AMD Control Panel Settings

• Go to Global Graphics.
  • Turn off Radeon Anti-Lag
  • Turn off Radeon Boost
  • Use Application settings for Anti-Aliasing Mode.
  • Set Anti-aliasing Methodto Multi-sampling
  • Turn off Morphological Filtering
  • Disable Image Sharpening
  • Turn off Anisotropic Filtering
  • Use Performance mode for Texture Filtering Quality.
  • You can also enable Surface Format Optimization.
  • AMD Optimization for the Tesselation Mode
  • Wait for V-sync– Turn it off.
  • Use AMD optimization for the Shader Cache.
  • Disable OpenGL Triple Buffering
  • Turn off Maximum Tesselation Level
  • Set Graphics for the GPU Workload
  • Turn off the Radeon Chill
  • Disable Frame Rate Target Control

6. Verify Game Files via Steam

The Sims 4 gamers on Steam client can follow the below steps:

• Open the Steam Library by logging into the account.
• You can find The Sims 4 game.
• Right-click on the game and click on Properties
• Select the Local Files tab
• Then click on Verify Integrity of game files.
• Wait for the process and then restart the game to check whether The Sims 4 Crashing issue has been fixed or not.

7. Repair Game Files via Epic Launcher

Epic Launcher users can verify and repair The Sims 4 game files by following the steps below:

• Open the Epic Launcher > Go to Library.
• Click on The Sims 4 game from the list and select the three dots icon.
• Now, click on Verify from the drop-down menu.
• It’ll start verifying and repairing the missing or corrupted game files depending on the file size.
• Wait for a couple of seconds or so > Once done, restart your Epic Launcher.
• Finally, try running The Sims 4 game again to check for the issue.

8. Uninstall Recent Windows 10 Update

A couple of days ago, Microsoft released a new update for Windows 10 with KB4535996. So, this particular cumulative update for Windows 10 is quite buggy and causing so many errors or problems.

• Go to Start menu > Click on Settings.
• Next, go to Update and Security.
• Click on View update history.
• Now, if you can see that there is an update having KB4535996 has been already installed. Make sure to uninstall it.
• Here you will see the Uninstall updates option on the top of the page.
• Click on it and select the mentioned cumulative update version.
• Right-click on it > Select Uninstall.
• It may take some time to delete that update, and your system may restart automatically.
• Have some patience, and you can also manually reboot your Windows PC (if required).

9. Remove Temporary Files

• Press Windows key + R on your keyboard to open the RUN program.
• Now, type %temp% and press enter.
• You will get a bunch of temporary files on a page.
• Select all files by pressing Ctrl + A on the keyboard.
  Next, press Shift + Delete on the keyboard to remove all the files.
• Sometimes some of the temporary files can’t be deleted. So, leave them as it is and close it.

10. Set Default CPU and Graphics Speed

As most of the users always want to use ultra-high performance from the CPU and GPU from the very first day. So, most of the users either buy an overclocked version or manually increased the overclocking speed. So, if you’ve also overclocked your GPU speed and after doing that you’re experiencing bottleneck or lagging or crashing related issues, just set it to default mode.

You can also use the MSI Afterburner tool or Zotac firestorm application in order to lower the clocking speed. Once done, you can run The Sims 4 game to check whether it’s crashing at startup or not.

That’s it. We hope this guide was useful to you. You can comment below for any queries.