When playing the Sims 2 Legacy Edition I am experiencing a blue screen with an hourglass that lasts 1-2 minutes then goes back to the game. This is happening every play session.
My Desktop PC is a 5 year old Dell Inspiron I3670. Intel i5-9400 Processor, 12GB DDR4 Memory, 2.90 Ghz and a 2 TB SSD. (I know the graphics is the integrated type.)

I took the PC to Best Buy to see what the issue was and Geek Squad couldn't duplicate the problem (lol)...One Tech said maybe it is the EA App but I don't know.. So I keep playing the game, but thought I would post here to see if anyone has the same issue or knows what's wrong. Thanks!

When are you experiencing it, as in what happens before you get the blue screen? Just happens out of the blue, or is it when the game is loading in resources (loading the game, loading CAS-related menus, loading CAS/hoods/lots, skin overlay transformations, or similar)

If it's the "sims" kind of bluescreen color + style of hourglass, and you're going from the game to the desktop to the game, this sounds more "normal".

If you're getting it at random times while playing, especially if the game has already loaded in what it's already loading, then I'd think something is going on.

But yeah - the EA App could be the culprit, possibly if you've got some internet connection issues, or the EA app has brief connection issues with the game.

It happens after I've been playing for a bit, once at a residence with 5 Sims and lately I'm at Uni playing and its happened about 3-4 days in a row now. The game doesn't crash to the desktop, the blue screen appears with the hourglass spinning for 1-2 minutes and then the games reappears like nothing has happened.

So just random, and not when the game is doing a task that requires loading lots of resources?

The blue screen + hourglass spinning is just the sims 2 basic loading screen, and usually means the game is doing a bit of loading/thinking time. I usually had it happen when switching between fullscreen and the desktop, sometimes took several minutes (not with the LC though, just the regular CD games. If changing graphic settings ingame, it can occasionally trigger the screen, too). It shouldn't happen unless it's triggered by something, though.

That's why I'm thinking it's the EA App causing the random occurrence, because it can be unstable at times. Do you have it set up to check for automatic updates or some such? If it's happening once (or twice?) a day, it could be during random update checks. Other potential culprits could be something the computer is diverting resources to (updates, antivirus scan, certain Windows processes).

Doing a bit of searching, I came across at least one other person having the same issue, though there weren't any solutions or even other posts. People have been complaining about the EA App being unstable, though.

Thanks very much for your input and trying to help. I did a search on EA app problems and stability earlier and did find a lot of complaints! I also saw on the EA app itself that there is a way to play offline-it looked at bit complicated though!
Thanks again!

I haven't tested offline use with the EA App, but on Origin (the old one), it used to just be a button in the settings. As long as you llogged in and then turned to offline mode, it worked (I think there was an option to start in offline mode too). Not sure if it works for the EA App, though.

Does getting a launcher bypass make it offline friendly?

Yes, but not sure if it works for the Legacy version. It does for disc versions and the UC.

I figured out how to go offline with the instructions on the EA App itself-hopefully that will fix my Blue Screen with hourglass problem