Sims 3 Won't Run on Win 10 with an i5 Processor

EricasFreePlay

@igazor I couldn't get the Pastebin to work but when I started Sims 3 on my laptop I get a black screen with what looks like half a white box. It appears that the game tries to run but eventually I get the following error in a white box which forces me to close the launcher and error box:

"Unable to start game. Service initialization failed (0x065d0274)." What the heck is going on?

igazor

On the dxdiag not posting, that's strange. Pastebin usually works perfectly (for most of us). But anyway, can you send the resulting file once you save it up to a third party file host instead and provide a link to that? There are many choices for these with free levels of service if you don't already subscribe to one (Google Docs, MediaFire, Box, DropBox, etc.) but you just have to make sure that the resulting link is set to be readable by anyone whom you give the link or else all we get is a login screen on our end.

Out of the box, so to speak, new Win 10 systems tend to require .NET 3.5 activation (it's installed but not necessarily activated) and DirectX 9 installation. TS3 requires both of these, the later versions of .NET and DirectX are fine to have as well but not what the game requires at startup.

1 - Go to Start Menu > Settings > Apps > Programs and Features (on the right) > Turn Windows Features On and Off. You can also get there by way of doing a search on Control Panel, then sort by name (small or large icon) and Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features On and Off. Look for .NET 3.5, it should be listed at or near the top, and check the box if it is totally unchecked (a white square). Don't worry about the two submenu items, also don't worry about .NET 4.8 just under it as they run independently of each other. If 3.5 needed to be activated, this might take a while (minutes, not hours) and then you will need to reboot your machine.

2 - You can download and run the DirectX 9 installer directly from Microsoft. There is no need to uninstall anything first.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109 This can be a little fussy, though. Many users find they need to first create a new folder (just about anywhere, the Desktop should be fine), download the installer and all of its content to that new folder, then look for the file called DXSETUP.exe among all the others. Double-clicking that will actually run the install. Then delete the folder and its contents as it would no longer be needed.

Does the game then launch? If not, then we would have to look at any security/anti-virus systems that came pre-installed on it to see if they are getting in the way.

EricasFreePlay

I will try again in a few days when I don't have much going on in RL to figure out what the actual problem is. If it's something that's just incompatible due to a video or graphics card, I will probably go back to my other HP laptop and see what happens. I just didn't realize that a $1200 Dell laptop would give me fits (Sims 2 Ultimate Collection runs just fine in comparison to Sims 3 and 4). I thought they were supposed to be capable of more advanced gaming without dropping $2000 on an actual gaming laptop.

igazor

On suitable hardware, it's not usually so much an issue of compatibility. It's much more often a matter of activating older versions of the elements of the operating system, as described above, to allow legacy applications designed in 2008-09 to run properly on 2020+ systems. No rush required though, some of us will still be here whenever you get around to it.