Panic with game file locations and EA advisers

Silvakristiina

Hi. So this is the case that causes my heart run fast laps

I bought a PC with enough stuff to run the game very smoothly, but I only had one small SSD where I installed everything without much thinking. When I realized that it was too late, I had everything from the Store and such installed and played the game. I bought a huge SSD and managed to connect it to my PC (nice). Then I wanted (and needed, the first SSD was exploding already) to move the games to the new SSD without uninstalling and reinstalling.

I tried to look for advice, and this is where I made my mistake: I didn't come here to write a post about it (instead of this panic post) but started chatting with EA advisor.

The first advisor was really nice and seemed to understand my case, hooray to that! He (or she, how would I know from a name I've never encountered before) advised me to change the location of the game via Origin. It was super easy, and I did that to both TS3 and TS4. I ended the discussion happily.

Then I checked the files. TS4 was now in two places, just copied to the new one. Fine, I don't care about TS4, but this makes me wonder what happened. (EDIT: I took the risk and pressed play, and TS4 is working just like it's supposed to, no harm done here.)

TS3 was moved, but anything else wasn't. All EP's are still where they were, which makes me think that maybe they should be moved too individually via Origin. The files in my documents are also still where they used to, and they are the reason I needed to do this change. The saves and (for some reason) the mods file are getting bigger and bigger...

So I contacted the EA again, but the second advisor was a joke. All he (or she, again) told me was to uninstall and reinstall the games, though I told him what I needed and what I was just advised a few minutes ago. He asked me twice if he could help me with some other thing (really??) and ended the discussion with words "I hope I gave you excellent customer service". Then the page didn't even ask me feedback, where I could have said that no, my problem wasn't solved. (This is as much a rant as it is a cry for help, because I'm so done with hearing the uninstall and reinstall stuff to _every_ problem with sims. Every simmer knows the amount of work and time it takes to reinstall TS3.

So here I am, not really being able to do anything. I'm going to bed anyway and maybe see things in a new light tomorrow. Oh how fun it is to be such a newbie every time there's some problem and have everything on you PC in Finnish so you have to translate everything that you'd know what you're even trying to talk about...

Tell me I'm just too tired and scared to realize this is nothing and can be fixed in a minute?



(@igazor I'm an ldiot with a small L... I bought the wrong PC! Anycase, now I have a nice SSD instead of HDD, so that's a good thing. But this wouldn't have happened if I had bought the PC I linked last May... This time I also tagged you here straight away )

Silvakristiina

Just a little funny thing I noticed I was trying to give feedback to EA with a sheet they provided. The problem is that there's a drop-down menu where's no options to choose the product you are there for, and it's a compulsory question, so I can't send the feedback. And because of that, I can't give them feedback that their feedback survey isn't working. It's hilarious I guess there's no customer support in Finnish at all, and without me having to do stuff I can't get to the English site, because of tracking my location... I have a strong love-hate relationship with EA

igazor

Okay, take a deep breath. You might not like this answer, but the second support agent was correct.

Origin provides a means to switch an already installed game from one drive to another. I have no idea how well or poorly it works and which games it will make a mess of (such as TS3 with its EPs as you encountered). May as well stop here. There are no shortcuts that I recognize to fix this properly.

-- Uninstall both games entirely from both drives.
-- Clean the Windows Registry using a product such as Piriform's CCleaner (the free version is fine).
-- Create a folder yourself on D or whatever the letter drive mapping is of your new, larger SSD. Call the new folder "Program Files on D" or whatever you like.
-- Install your games and EP/SPs onto that new folder; whether these are Origin or disc installs, you should be able to instruct the installer where you want it done (might be called a "custom install" when you get to that step).

As for your user game folders in Documents, those will live on whichever drive your Documents folder is on according to Windows. If you want your Documents folder to really be on D (the game doesn't care as long as it finds your "real" Documents folder), then that needs to be arranged through Windows.
https://www.dummies.com/computers/operating-systems/windows-10/how-to-change-the-location-of-user-folders-in-windows-10
(sorry for the insulting sounding link, but they do have good instructions and illustrations for this)

There is a way to keep your Documents folder on C where I assume it is now and use Junction Points to get your user game folders to be on D, but if space is that tight on C there really isn't any reason to pursue that.

And finally, the size of saved games will change as you play them but mod files (you meant the package files in Mods\Packages?) are only read from at startup. They never change unless you are downloading more content and adding to them. Mod settings and options are stored in saved games, not in the Mods files.

Silvakristiina

Thank you @igazor, for the about a thousandth time so far for helping me! You really should be the only advisor EA has for TS3, but apparently they never even pay you 🙈

Tutorials for dummies sounds exactly perfect! 😊 I just called myself an ldiot, so dummy is much better, don't you think...

I'm already fine with the idea of reinstalling TS3, I slept four hours already and calmed down 😄 I was skeptical about the Origin way actually being so easy, and I hate that I even tried it with TS3. For TS4 it apparently worked, I have to delete the original file to make sure. There's only one test game anyway, tough installing the games again requires days with my internet connection... Sims 3 I will install from physical copies so that EIG in CAW would work (and I could skip the Launcher, if I just remembered never to update to the last patch). That takes days too, because then I'd need to download the Store again, but I could back up the Store for both physical and Origin versions. I read there is a difference.

I get what I get for acting so hasty. Maybe I have now learned never to contact the EA customer service again. Like I said, the first advisor was really nice, and if the second one would have said anything like you to explaing his advices for fixing other advicers advices (a tongue twister), instead of clearly not listening my case but giving the regular answer, I probably wouldn't have freaked out this much 🙄 I just don't have days to fix it right now. But how anyone would, if they could just play the game instead... I found my way to Simblrs finally (I'm really not even that old, what happened that I became a late adaptor? 🤔) and was about to do a Simblr Sim Just for Fun challenge Play Date switch with someone, but that'll have to wait.

Again, thank you @igazor 💗 You're so sweet for constantly helping out forever-newbies like me!

Silvakristiina

And oh, yes, it's the Packages folder that keeps mysteriously growing every time I open my browser... 😅

I keep messing file and folder in my speak. You could translate file to both file and folder in some cases in Finnish, so maybe that's why I never think too much about it.

Silvakristiina

Non panicking update!

I tested with TS4. The old shortcut didn't work, but I launched it from Origin. Worked just fine. Then I took the risk and tried with TS3, and it worked! IT WORKED! Now I'll move all EP's as well and test if it still works. I'll do the clean installation when I run short on ideas and have three days to use on that I'm so relieved!

No, I'm not a little stubborn or anything...