@Nikkei_Simmer I don't know where you're getting this from. Again, EA fixed this for another game, so clearly EA could fix it for Sims 3. And lots of other games didn't initially run on Alder Lake CPUs, and lots of other game publishers fixed those too.
Also, if this is an issue with the architecture of these processors, even Intel couldn't change it after the fact. Many of the CPUs are already out in the wild, so to speak, and can't be modified after the fact; and equally importantly, the process for manufacturing them wouldn't be changed at this late stage. Even if Intel could make some adjustments, its only goal here is to outcompete AMD CPUs in modern gaming benchmarks and therefore claw back some of its lost market share. It's not sacrificing one of its technological breakthroughs to protect compatibility with a game from 2009.
Besides, Intel doesn't care to hear from gamers at all and wouldn't even blink at a deluge of posts from TS3 players. Even Microsoft probably cares more, and Microsoft doesn't care at all either.
What it is, is a proprietary driver issue affecting DRM (Digital Rights Management) in certain games affecting the bootup process causing the system to hang (crash) -
Digital Rights Management tools in software such as games would recognize Efficient cores as a separate system. This would trigger the DRM protection and it could result in the game suddenly shutting down or game launchers being prevented from starting whatsoever.
This means each game has to be patched by Intel individually in order to be considered fixed. This requires notification by gamers to Intel (informing them of the problem and Intel will work with EA to formulate a solution - EA will only move on this issue if notified by Intel that there is a problem).
But sure, @puzzlezaddict, keep banging on EA’s door. From where I can see, EA is not invested in Sims 3 anymore as one of the devs even dumped over Sims 3, calling it “not as good as Sims 4”.
It’s been stated by several sources, that the procedure in this case is to contact Intel directly and they will notify EA of the problem with the game and develop a solution.
Naturally, gamers who are still, for some reason, encountering such problems are encouraged to reach out to Intel so that those issues can quickly be patched.
So…by all means. You can keep pestering EA who doesn’t really care if Sims 3 doesn’t work for 12th gen systems, or you can notify Intel so that they can poke EA and say “hey, your game isn’t working on our 12-gen processor, let’s craft a solution”.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
~dripping sarcasm~ or the other choice is to keep banging on EA’s door…as per what others have advocated doing and hope that something comes of that.
We all know how well that’s going to work.
And Intel is invested in how many games will work on its new Alder Lake architecture. It’s not good press to have gamers complaining that many games are being affected by how their DRM reads the new CPU having non-functioning games as a result.
But just keep doing what you’re doing. My only dog in the fight is I want a 12th gen CPU for its ability to crunch the myriad computations for MSFS2020. I just don’t particularly want to lose the capacity to play Sims 3 in order to do it.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
@Nikkei_Simmer Did you actually read what the articles you linked said? All three of them had the same info, this from Intel:
At this time, all games originally identified as having this DRM issue have been fixed through game patches or OS updates.
The issues have been fixed through game patches or OS updates. As in, the game publisher or Microsoft fixed the issues. Not Intel.
My guess is that Intel wants the information about still-broken games so that it can tell game publishers what to do about it, not so that Intel can address it directly. If it were going to implement a fix itself, it would have back in the fall when this issue first surfaced.
And I haven't been suggesting that anyone contact EA about this. EA is already aware of the issue. The reason it hasn't been addressed is probably that it's not a priority, so if people did want to make a case that fixing Sims 3 matters, the place to go would be EA, not Intel, which, again, just told software developers what to do about the Denuvo issue. But I'm not optimistic that contacting EA would make a difference either; I'm just saying EA is the entity that has to actually fix the problem.
I upgraded my PC to a 12th gen cpu but I don't really feel like using a powershell script made by someone else to limit my CPU to using only one core for The Sims 3 so... I guess this is goodbye The Sims 3.
I upgraded my PC to a 12th gen cpu but I don't really feel like using a powershell script made by someone else to limit my CPU to using only one core for The Sims 3 so... I guess this is goodbye The Sims 3.
I upgraded my PC to a 12th gen cpu but I don't really feel like using a powershell script made by someone else to limit my CPU to using only one core for The Sims 3 so... I guess this is goodbye The Sims 3.
That's sad that you're giving up on Sims 3. Is it that you are having trouble with getting this method to work? Going to the EA helps forums can maybe help you. It's true it may not work, but I think you should give it a shot in case that it does work.
I upgraded my PC to a 12th gen cpu but I don't really feel like using a powershell script made by someone else to limit my CPU to using only one core for The Sims 3 so... I guess this is goodbye The Sims 3.
That's sad that you're giving up on Sims 3. Is it that you are having trouble with getting this method to work? Going to the EA helps forums can maybe help you. It's true it may not work, but I think you should give it a shot in case that it does work.
I can get it to work, it has more to do with that I don't like running the solution. The solution as a user suggested on Answer HQ is to run a powershell script to limit The Sims3 usage of your CPU to a single core.
I try to stay away from "special solutions" like powershell scripts and bat files and such to run games. I don't like it, and while the code is stated in the users post, you should never run unknown scripts, registry edits and whatever on your computer unless you really want to do whatever those scripts will enable you to do.
And I would rather wait for a proper solution to be implemented.
I thought that script would only disable all but one of the cores for startup only then re-engage the cores once the game was fully loaded. Or did I miss something?
I’m staying away from buying a Gen 12 CPU period. i’ll stick with a gaming system that I know will run the Sims 3 without problem even if I have to get a used system for now
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
In case anyone's wondering, you can extract the .zip wherever you want, then launch the patch and point it at whichever .exe runs the game (TS3.exe for Origin, TS3W.exe, with the W, for disc or Steam). This patch essentially applies the same workaround as the PowerShell script to the game .exe so it works on its own, with no need to run the patch or do anything else after the first time.
Thanks for spreading the word @Puzzleaddict. While I don't have the issue it's great LazyDutches took the time to create a patch for it. If this patch works as intended, EA will most likely never create an 'official' fix.
In case anyone's wondering, you can extract the .zip wherever you want, then launch the patch and point it at whichever .exe runs the game (TS3.exe for Origin, TS3W.exe, with the W, for disc or Steam). This patch essentially applies the same workaround as the PowerShell script to the game .exe so it works on its own, with no need to run the patch or do anything else after the first time.
And no, EA hasn't fixed this problem yet.
Thank you Puzzleaddict and Lazy Duchess for another workaround for users. Thank you Puzzleaddict for continuously trying to help those in need on here and the Ea help forms. And thanks you Lady Duchess for the additional workaround. It's good to see users help others out. Thanks again.
@EA_Cade - Has there been any word on progress with this issue? @Puzzleaddict - Do you know if Lazy Dutchess' work-around works with dual graphic card machines?
@mw1525 Sorry for the late reply; I didn't see this until now.
Lazy Duchess's patch works on any Windows install regardless of the hardware. Only 12th-gen and a couple other Intel processors need the workaround, of course, but the patch itself isn't dependent on the CPU. And it also has nothing to do with which graphics card or cards are in the machine.
I've heard from a few players who say the patch doesn't work for them, and I'm not totally sure why, but it may be that the patch's limit doesn't last long enough: if Sims 3 starts up too slowly, the artificial limit of one CPU core expires before the game can get past the underlying problem. But that's not influenced by the GPU, or at least there's no evidence that it is.
I've been trying to get The Sims 3 working for the past few days and just when I think I've cracked it I get error code 16, it says to check the read me but I can't seem to find anything in my documents folder.
I'm using 0 mods, the saves are literally less than an hour old. First save goes fine but then when I try to save again, I get error code 16. When I right click on the first save folder it's about 30mb in size, so super super small. I was playing as a single sim household in the standard Riverview.
My PC has 32GB of RAM, i5-12600K CPU and NVIDIA GTX 1070 GPU. I've followed the usual recommendations to get my card recognised which says it's found. My drive has about 300GB free so plenty of space.
Game Options:
Windowed mode, 1920 x 1080
Enable Object Hiding, Enable Animation Smoothing, Enable Advanced Rendering - on
Reflection Quality - off
Edge Smoothing - Low
Draw Distance - Medium
Visual Effects - High
High Detail Lots - 6
Lighting and Shadows - High
Texture Detail - High
Tree Detail - Medium
Sim Detail - Very High
Shop Mode, Lessons, Memories, Interactive Loading Screens - off
Has anyone had this problem before? Ideally, I want to eventually add mods in but right now I'd just like to play it fullstop
I've been trying to get The Sims 3 working for the past few days and just when I think I've cracked it I get error code 16, it says to check the read me but I can't seem to find anything in my documents folder.
I'm using 0 mods, the saves are literally less than an hour old. First save goes fine but then when I try to save again, I get error code 16. When I right click on the first save folder it's about 30mb in size, so super super small. I was playing as a single sim household in the standard Riverview.
My PC has 32GB of RAM, i5-12600K CPU and NVIDIA GTX 1070 GPU. I've followed the usual recommendations to get my card recognised which says it's found. My drive has about 300GB free so plenty of space.
Game Options:
Windowed mode, 1920 x 1080
Enable Object Hiding, Enable Animation Smoothing, Enable Advanced Rendering - on
Reflection Quality - off
Edge Smoothing - Low
Draw Distance - Medium
Visual Effects - High
High Detail Lots - 6
Lighting and Shadows - High
Texture Detail - High
Tree Detail - Medium
Sim Detail - Very High
Shop Mode, Lessons, Memories, Interactive Loading Screens - off
Has anyone had this problem before? Ideally, I want to eventually add mods in but right now I'd just like to play it fullstop
Looks like the Moderators merged your thread to the thread I was linking to previously just look up to one of puzzleaddicts posts to find a possible fix.
Post edited by ScottDemon on
I'm just a little bit crazy LOL
Okay actually I'm totally and completely nuts LOL
Really late to the party, sorry, but Lazy Duchess's patch does the trick for 12th gen Intel processors and so does the Miaa245's script from same thread too. As bonus, Plasma_Ball1 altered the script for Medieval (Have not tried that yet personally). What I read, if those do not work, Project Lasso should. So yeah, it is absolutely fixable by EA, EA app on the other hand is another pile of............... man, it must be the hardest software EVER to get to work correctly, but that's another story.
I recently built a new PC and Sims 3 has never run so smoothly. Albeit must be the jumping from i7-860, 16GbDDR3, GTX1070 and old school HDD (bought 2006 and still works btw) to i7-12700KF, 32GbDDR4, RTX3080 and NVME SSD. No need for RAMDisk anymore In the last few days I have been playing probably 15-20 hours without one single crash
Nraas, open world, cars, the amount of lots in single world Yeah, not going back to Sims 4 anytime soon. Happy simming!
Sims 3 PC monitor is discontinued due severe freeze and/or sunburn! Yeah, I'm a nut, so give me a cracker... With cheese, please..
"I knew this was a great idea! But you should have told me how bad it actually is..."
I spent a whole week away from TS3 and spent it playing TS4… Mt serious hatred of TS4 lead my right back here… I calmed down enough to really spend time trying to find out how to fix the issues I was having… the EA app finally downloaded all my EPs and SPs.. yay! I found a few workarounds, written in basic terms so even I could understand lol and I now know how to start the game and save without the dreaded save 16 error… Im now reunited with my gorgeous Sims family… Now, I’m off to (try) to build my family a bigger home… mum has given birth to 3 set of twins, a set of triplets and 2 sets of quads, and still wants more kids! Their 5 bedroom home has become a little cramped! Add in the 4 dogs, 3 cats and 2 horses and it’s mayhem!
I tried to run Sims 3 on Ubuntu 22.04 using Wine. But I was getting "Unhandled division by zero" error at address 0x613702. I was thinking that this is a Wine issue not Sims 3.
Next day I opened Sims 3 in "some program that allows edit binary files" than I search for address 0x613702. I found excepted DIV op-code. I changed it to other op-code that do nothing. It is important to use op-code with same length so exe is same in size. Sims 3 started to work. I looked forward to debug this issue it looks it is related to CPU detect on new Adler Lake (12th gen CPU).
I won't give more information on how to fix it because it is now
EA please FIX this issue. It can be fixed with simple binary patch to exe.. So Origin or EA Launcher can do it or Steam can do it..
If some one is interested with creating "patcher" that will fix Sims 3. Contact me on PM.
OK it's May 2023 and I'm necro posting but I have a new Lenovo 12th gen processor computer and in a wave of nostalgia wanted to play my old fav games and though I have sent in a ticket to EA have also read all the old posts on EA help and some workarounds (that I don't really want to do). Don't think EA will ever fix this so perhaps will need to (sadly) uninstall Sims 3. Sims 4 works fine.
In case anyone's wondering, you can extract the .zip wherever you want, then launch the patch and point it at whichever .exe runs the game (TS3.exe for Origin, TS3W.exe, with the W, for disc or Steam). This patch essentially applies the same workaround as the PowerShell script to the game .exe so it works on its own, with no need to run the patch or do anything else after the first time.
OK it's May 2023 and I'm necro posting but I have a new Lenovo 12th gen processor computer and in a wave of nostalgia wanted to play my old fav games and though I have sent in a ticket to EA have also read all the old posts on EA help and some workarounds (that I don't really want to do). Don't think EA will ever fix this so perhaps will need to (sadly) uninstall Sims 3. Sims 4 works fine.
Hi @rudolpha Did you apply the patch mentioned above to your game? That's what the issue is.
I'm a 48 year old married man, with a beautiful wife, a cat, and a simverted personality.My Sims 3 Pictures
Comments
Also, if this is an issue with the architecture of these processors, even Intel couldn't change it after the fact. Many of the CPUs are already out in the wild, so to speak, and can't be modified after the fact; and equally importantly, the process for manufacturing them wouldn't be changed at this late stage. Even if Intel could make some adjustments, its only goal here is to outcompete AMD CPUs in modern gaming benchmarks and therefore claw back some of its lost market share. It's not sacrificing one of its technological breakthroughs to protect compatibility with a game from 2009.
Besides, Intel doesn't care to hear from gamers at all and wouldn't even blink at a deluge of posts from TS3 players. Even Microsoft probably cares more, and Microsoft doesn't care at all either.
But sure, @puzzlezaddict, keep banging on EA’s door. From where I can see, EA is not invested in Sims 3 anymore as one of the devs even dumped over Sims 3, calling it “not as good as Sims 4”.
It’s been stated by several sources, that the procedure in this case is to contact Intel directly and they will notify EA of the problem with the game and develop a solution.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000088261/processors/intel-core-processors.html
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.techspot.com/amp/news/92942-all-games-impacted-alder-lakedrm-issues-have-now.html
https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-fully-resolves-drm-issues-with-its-12th-gen-core-alder-lake-processors
So…by all means. You can keep pestering EA who doesn’t really care if Sims 3 doesn’t work for 12th gen systems, or you can notify Intel so that they can poke EA and say “hey, your game isn’t working on our 12-gen processor, let’s craft a solution”.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
We all know how well that’s going to work.
And Intel is invested in how many games will work on its new Alder Lake architecture. It’s not good press to have gamers complaining that many games are being affected by how their DRM reads the new CPU having non-functioning games as a result.
But just keep doing what you’re doing. My only dog in the fight is I want a 12th gen CPU for its ability to crunch the myriad computations for MSFS2020. I just don’t particularly want to lose the capacity to play Sims 3 in order to do it.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
I can confirm that The Sims team are aware of this issue with the Alder Lake family of processors and are currently investigating.
The issues have been fixed through game patches or OS updates. As in, the game publisher or Microsoft fixed the issues. Not Intel.
My guess is that Intel wants the information about still-broken games so that it can tell game publishers what to do about it, not so that Intel can address it directly. If it were going to implement a fix itself, it would have back in the fall when this issue first surfaced.
And I haven't been suggesting that anyone contact EA about this. EA is already aware of the issue. The reason it hasn't been addressed is probably that it's not a priority, so if people did want to make a case that fixing Sims 3 matters, the place to go would be EA, not Intel, which, again, just told software developers what to do about the Denuvo issue. But I'm not optimistic that contacting EA would make a difference either; I'm just saying EA is the entity that has to actually fix the problem.
Thank you. Hopefully this will result in a PERMANENT fix for this problem. @EA_Cade.
I’m presuming this is, like the other games, a DRM issue with regards to “Alder Lake processor cores miscommunication with the game software”?
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
That's sad that you're giving up on Sims 3. Is it that you are having trouble with getting this method to work? Going to the EA helps forums can maybe help you. It's true it may not work, but I think you should give it a shot in case that it does work.
I can get it to work, it has more to do with that I don't like running the solution. The solution as a user suggested on Answer HQ is to run a powershell script to limit The Sims3 usage of your CPU to a single core.
I try to stay away from "special solutions" like powershell scripts and bat files and such to run games. I don't like it, and while the code is stated in the users post, you should never run unknown scripts, registry edits and whatever on your computer unless you really want to do whatever those scripts will enable you to do.
And I would rather wait for a proper solution to be implemented.
I’m staying away from buying a Gen 12 CPU period. i’ll stick with a gaming system that I know will run the Sims 3 without problem even if I have to get a used system for now
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Sims-3-won-t-open-Alder-Lake-Intel-12th-gen-CPU/m-p/11524785#M250970
In case anyone's wondering, you can extract the .zip wherever you want, then launch the patch and point it at whichever .exe runs the game (TS3.exe for Origin, TS3W.exe, with the W, for disc or Steam). This patch essentially applies the same workaround as the PowerShell script to the game .exe so it works on its own, with no need to run the patch or do anything else after the first time.
And no, EA hasn't fixed this problem yet.
But hey, here's hoping!
Thank you Puzzleaddict and Lazy Duchess for another workaround for users. Thank you Puzzleaddict for continuously trying to help those in need on here and the Ea help forms. And thanks you Lady Duchess for the additional workaround. It's good to see users help others out. Thanks again.
@Puzzleaddict - Do you know if Lazy Dutchess' work-around works with dual graphic card machines?
Lazy Duchess's patch works on any Windows install regardless of the hardware. Only 12th-gen and a couple other Intel processors need the workaround, of course, but the patch itself isn't dependent on the CPU. And it also has nothing to do with which graphics card or cards are in the machine.
I've heard from a few players who say the patch doesn't work for them, and I'm not totally sure why, but it may be that the patch's limit doesn't last long enough: if Sims 3 starts up too slowly, the artificial limit of one CPU core expires before the game can get past the underlying problem. But that's not influenced by the GPU, or at least there's no evidence that it is.
I'm using 0 mods, the saves are literally less than an hour old. First save goes fine but then when I try to save again, I get error code 16. When I right click on the first save folder it's about 30mb in size, so super super small. I was playing as a single sim household in the standard Riverview.
My PC has 32GB of RAM, i5-12600K CPU and NVIDIA GTX 1070 GPU. I've followed the usual recommendations to get my card recognised which says it's found. My drive has about 300GB free so plenty of space.
Game Options:
Windowed mode, 1920 x 1080
Enable Object Hiding, Enable Animation Smoothing, Enable Advanced Rendering - on
Reflection Quality - off
Edge Smoothing - Low
Draw Distance - Medium
Visual Effects - High
High Detail Lots - 6
Lighting and Shadows - High
Texture Detail - High
Tree Detail - Medium
Sim Detail - Very High
Shop Mode, Lessons, Memories, Interactive Loading Screens - off
Has anyone had this problem before? Ideally, I want to eventually add mods in but right now I'd just like to play it fullstop
Looks like the Moderators merged your thread to the thread I was linking to previously just look up to one of puzzleaddicts posts to find a possible fix.
Okay actually I'm totally and completely nuts LOL
I recently built a new PC and Sims 3 has never run so smoothly. Albeit must be the jumping from i7-860, 16GbDDR3, GTX1070 and old school HDD (bought 2006 and still works btw) to i7-12700KF, 32GbDDR4, RTX3080 and NVME SSD. No need for RAMDisk anymore
Nraas, open world, cars, the amount of lots in single world
Now, I’m off to (try) to build my family a bigger home… mum has given birth to 3 set of twins, a set of triplets and 2 sets of quads, and still wants more kids! Their 5 bedroom home has become a little cramped! Add in the 4 dogs, 3 cats and 2 horses and it’s mayhem!
Next day I opened Sims 3 in "some program that allows edit binary files" than I search for address 0x613702. I found excepted DIV op-code. I changed it to other op-code that do nothing. It is important to use op-code with same length so exe is same in size. Sims 3 started to work. I looked forward to debug this issue it looks it is related to CPU detect on new Adler Lake (12th gen CPU).
I won't give more information on how to fix it because it is now
EA please FIX this issue. It can be fixed with simple binary patch to exe.. So Origin or EA Launcher can do it or Steam can do it..
If some one is interested with creating "patcher" that will fix Sims 3. Contact me on PM.
Hi @rudolpha Did you apply the patch mentioned above to your game? That's what the issue is.