Something very annoying has happened to my Sims3 settings, twice now.

When I started up Sims3 recently I got as far as the main menu and was confronted by that pop-up that says hold on you're not on-line (or words to that effect). I thought I had long since disabled that. It was as though I was starting up the game for the first time, and I soon found I had to also disable those interactive loading screens, lessons, shop mode, on-line notifications and memories. I also had to re-do all my life span settings in Options. I got everything back to normal, but a few days later it happened again! WTF was going on?

Well, I recently thought it was high time I updated Window10. I normally have automatic updates disabled, for the very reason that I don't want anything unexpected like this to happen - I've heard some scary stories. And it seems that Microsoft have now made it so that certain drivers, such as Nvidia, can get through, even if you do have automatic updates disabled. And amongst the things that did get installed with those updates was the most recent Nvidia driver for my graphics card. I didn't think anything of it till I tried starting Sims3 and had to go all through that tedious business again! And will I have to do it every time a new graphics driver gets shoved onto my laptop, whether I want it or not?

Now, I think (only think, mind you) that I have managed to disable automatic driver updates as well (I'm afraid I've forgotten what I had to do) and we shall see if that works. But Microsoft, as many have learned by bitter experience, is sneaky.

Anyways, I was wondering how many others, if any, have encountered this annoyance. I say 'if any' because I may be completely wrong about this and something else is the cause. In which case I am going to look very silly (again). I'm not very tech savvy, and at my age I am probably never going to be.

I had this happen. I had to reinstall framework and something else I had to track down and install again(can’t remember what it is off the top of my head) I had to shut of my Nividia auto update of drivers. I wait till I’m mentally prepared to refix it all and I have all my settings copied into a word document so I can restore it.

I wrote a tutorial on this somewhere on a thread. I should go back and find it.

@marydehoyos

Yes, good idea about making a copy of settings, I think will do that too, just in case it happens again. But hopefully I have fixed it.

Its because the options.ini file keeps a record of your driver version. When that driver changes, it resets the options.ini file.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims3/comm...driver_updates/

I have to redo my options every time I do a driver update. And somewhere along the line I had to start playing in windows mode or too dark, and cannot use edge scroll anymore and now have to use keyboard to move camera well.

So am raising me too hand!

I found these steps that might solve your issue:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical...en/td-p/1273290

I always find enabling edge scrolling a bit bothersome. Game asks if I want to enable edge scrolling, I do, and it doesn't. So I go into options and disable it, then back to live mode, then back to options again to enable it. Finally it works. At least I think that's the procedure: it used to be something I only had to do once, after installing the game on a new computer.

I remember learning something new from Archivist on The Sims forum on the topic: Sims 3 Things you didn't know!

"Archivist;c-18209879" wrote:
This isn't necessarily an in-game thing, but I only recently realized that the last four digits of the "lastdevice" line in Options.ini are the same as the last four digits of the Nvidia driver version you have installed. For example, I just installed Nvidia driver version 527.56, so the last four digits of lastdevice should be changed to 2756. This is useful if you have an Nvidia graphics card and The Sims 3 constantly deletes all of your settings any time you update the driver. I used to do a whole annoying routine of backing up my Options.ini, booting up the game, having my settings wipe out, closing the game, copying the newly generated lastdevice line to my backup, saving the backup as my new Options.ini, then booting the game again to actually play if I even feel like it anymore. Now I just edit Options.ini and change those four numbers whenever I update my Nvidia driver.

This is probably a boring response, but it's exciting to me because that problem was so annoying."

I used to do this every time I would update my graphics driver once I found out and it not only worked flawlessly but was super easy. Though it's probably a good idea to save your options regardless, just in case.

Ohhh I'm going to have to try this. My driver keeps saying it needs an update.

@Deshong

Thanks for that, very useful to know.

I have just discovered something else that got re-set, which I never even suspected. I was trying to create a new sim in CAS when I realised that many of the sliders I have installed were missing, and some of those that were visible didn't work. I couldn't understand it, I'd not installed anything recently that could cause a conflict, and all the sliders I've installed were all still there in my mods folder.

But then I considered how it was that I had so many additional sliders in the game in the first place, and finally remembered how, long, long ago I used Nraas Master Controller, Settings, CAS to increase the number. So the damned Nvidia update reset that too!

I get there, in the end. But now I'm wondering how many more little puzzles I'm going to have to solve before my game gets back to normal.

EDIT: Actually I was completely wrong. I'd been moving some mods around, and somehow I managed to lose Master Controller Integration. So of course it wouldn't work! Must be going gaga in my old age.