Just bought a new Lenovo computer. Loaded all my Sims 3 games up. I open a world, chose a family to play, play a few minutes and quit. Because I want to load my custom content and particularly my cheat packages. Go to Mod The Sims and follow the instructions for getting my Mods folder into The Sims 3 folder. Go back to load the game and it loads fine - the build sparkles and intro are gone so obviously it read the mod things - and when I choose the world I get an error message and it will not load the world. I have tried different worlds. Same error message and unable to go further. I did a repair - same exact error. I took out the Framework package and the mods folder - same error. Finally I deleted everything. Downloaded ONLY the Sims 3. Started it up the game loads fine. Load the Framework download and get the Mods folder into the file go in to the game and exactly the same error and it won't allow me to go into any world again. Take out the framework and the mods folder and it won't let me play. So, now I have to delete the game and reload it but I will be unable to use any of my cheats. What is my problem? Is it Windows 11 or is it Lenovo or is it ME???
Updating this question because I figured out how to get rid of the video card error. But it still does not allow me to go in to the world I played 5 minutes before. I get the error message "A serious error has occurred while loading Sunset Valley/sim 3. It is strongly recommended that you restart the application." I am never able to get back in no matter how many times I close the game and re-launch it.
I am using EAApp. My computer is a Lenovo Processor is AMD Ryzen 5 Graphics Card is AMD Radeon 660M 8.00 GM RAM.

I have windows 11 on a PC and laptop and my game plays well on both.

Did you make sure to get the Graphics card recognized?

https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/...p?topic=26753.0

I did not. TBH I had 3 on this laptop on 10 and then went to 11. I think current PC had 11 when got and had no problem installing 3 on it. I seem to recall got same message but it installed anyway and plays with no problem.

TS3 will run fine without the card being recognized by the game. I haven't set mine up to be recognized by the game itself either and haven't had a single issue, I also use Windows 11, though I'm still on 23h and refuse to update until Microsoft gets their crap together, so maybe that's why I haven't had issues. My GPU on my laptop is a dedicated chip btw - Nvidia 3050 RTX 4GB. Kind of low-end nowadays, but gets the job done!

It would be useful to us to know what GPU you're using. If your GPU you're using for TS3 is a dedicated and not integrated, you may need to change settings in Windows 11 for it to use your dedicated instead of your integrated as a primary. When I first got my laptop I had to make the change to get all apps to use my dedicated instead as by default Windows 11 will use whatever is recognized as being in "slot 1" which is usually your integrated.

If you have a NVIDIA dedicated chip the above can be achieve by going into the NVIDIA Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Preferred Graphics Processor then change that to your dedicated NIVIDIA chip. Which will force it for all apps.

I don't honestly know how it works for AMD chipsets, since haven't used AMD for graphics since 2011-ish and any information I have on that would be irrelevant nowadays.

Gentle reminder to everyone that not personally seeing the ill effects of something doesn't mean they aren't there
Graphics card recognition is an essential step for setting up this game on modern systems. Without it, the game will throttle itself as if you have the lowest end GPU. Performance will be suffering whether you notice or not.

It's a normal to get the warning message on startup and it's likely unrelated to the issues described in this post, but it shouldn't be ignored. A warning for this has even been built into the latest version of Overwatch.

For OP,
Does it return to normal if you move your The Sims 3 user folder (the one with your mods and saves and such) to another location and allow a new one to be generated when you next launch the game?
And what is the source of this install? EA App, Steam, retail disc?
No OneDrive syncing the game files?

I've got two suggestions for you, OP. I know the second video is a updated version of the first, but I can't tell you how as YouTube insists that I'm a bot and won't let me see the video.

Anywho, the first "outdated" video is the one I use to match my graphics card to my system when I have to reinstall my game.

*OUTDATED* ULTIMATE SIMS 3 FIX GUIDE 💫 (2021)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-uBFKOen-4

Here's the updated version...

EVERY Sims 3 Fix for Smooth Gameplay in 2025! (The NEW & DEFINITIVE Guide)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC3tNYsfAI8

Madi explains things well, but if you're still not sure what you're doing, hopefully you have somebody around that can figure it out. It isn't hard, but it does require some patience.

Nobody has said that the problems do not exist for any others. I got the notice on my install on a very high end PC with 11 which is less than a year old and totally ignored it. My PC plays the game at the highest settings with no problems whatsoever. I have no idea if makes any difference or not but all my installs are totally discs.

This laptop I am on at the moment with 11 plays the game at the highest settings also with no problem and I have done nothing regarding 11 and the graphics it has.

I hope the original poster can get something to work. Our hardware varies and sometimes some of us need some things and others not. Each one of our installs is unique.

Sorry, but no- and I don't see any value in encouraging others to be ignorant about how the game works.
I am specifically referring to something that doesn't vary between installs- this is something the game is programmed to do.

Your combination of specs, playstyle, modlist, etc making up for it is precisely what I mean. Issues not presenting themselves does not equal issues not being present- just like it's possible to happily play with uncapped FPS, right up until your graphics card burns out.
There are settings out of the users control (ie not available in the Game Options) that are set based on what graphics card is identified. If the graphics card is unrecognised, these are throttled to their minimum.
At best, some graphical effects will be lost, at worst, you can encounter memory related crashes earlier because the game will only spare 32MB for textures.

It's fine if your game runs perfectly for you that way.
But there are only benefits to removing that bottleneck, in a game that needs all the relief it can get, so I personally would not tell other players that it's fine to ignore.

I did not tell anyone what to do. I simply stated what I have done or not done and my game is fine. I also have been told/read over the years here several times that certain other things are absolute for 3 that have been totally not true for everyone. I have darn near been accused of telling lies when said that particular thing did not apply to my game. As I said, our games vary and I hope something works for the original poster.

The name of the thread is issues with Windows 11 anyone? And my answer is for me no on both a PC and laptop and I have everything other than K Perry installed on both which I did not get. Harvee also posted he has not had issues. We answered the poster's question. We have not had problems with 11.

I gotta say this made me laugh and has made my day. There can't be an issue if someone were to experience no symptoms of an issue. If the game "throttles" itself, yet there is no decrease in performance, or any noticeable issues, then is there really an issue?

That'd be like me going to a doctor and insisting I have cancer when I have no cancerous tumor(s).

I do think that CardinalSims is trying to help here and what is being said may help many including the original poster. I also can say that perhaps I am fortunate that I tend to get good hardware, and I know my game plays at highest settings with no problems. If playing at 95% rather than maybe 100% on mine, it is fine for me. But I understand that some players have older or not as high end computers where it may make much more of a difference. So what CardinalSims is suggesting is definitely worth a try for many, and especially if any problems.

note: disagree on your post is not me....

I get what CardinalSims is trying to do - be helpful. But I don't see how, if someone is like us both where how the "fix it even if it ain't broke" type attitude would be useful. Not only that but the wording used by CardinalSims was simply bad word usage as it goes against logic 101. There cannot be an issue if there is no issue. In the OPs case there is an issue and CardinalSims' suggestion may help, but CardinalSims is acting as if even for those like us that have no issue, that we must also fix what is not broken. If someone is reading this and is having no issues because of lack of graphics card being recognized, then all I can see in that case is don't listen to CardinalSims' advise and go about trying to fix what is not broken.

As for disagrees, I know it isn't you. I can see who clicks that button. I wish the user who clicked disagree would explain why they disagree with logic 101 though.

Those tutorials are quite helpful and I'm gonna add another tutorial I found to the list by HelloYello: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY8umH1pB5E&t=4s

I've tried the steps mentioned in the video and it seems to have helped a bit (I'm on Windows 10). I think some of the steps are similar to those in acottonsock's videos.

This comparison was so close, yet so far :p
It's more like having a currently harmless mole removed because of the chance it can turn cancerous- that's kind of the definition of an underlying issue, or one that can get worse long before noticeable symptoms.

Like I said to Daisy, if you're happy with your performance you're welcome to ignore the advice and don't need to leap to fix it. But if one ever does encounter issues, or asks for troubleshooting help at NRaas for example, that would be among the early suggestions to address.
We all know that this game has various engine flaws, from memory leaks to poor error handling- so the more relief on it the better. You may have a computer that can make up for the bottleneck, but it'd be a benefit if it didn't have to do that.

My intent was simply seeing two voices say it can be ignored and lightly correct that can doesn't mean should. It was not intended as a slight toward either of you and the setups you're content with.
At the end of the day, OP seems to be experiencing an issue far unrelated to this anyway- and what they actually need to to do to resolve it remains to be seen until they respond.

I'm glad you found them useful.

TS3 doesn't cap frame rates, so if people get nothing else from those videos and have a NIVIDA card, they should at least do that much. I don't know what the process is for other kinds of video cards, but video cards are expensive to replace. A ounce of prevention ( not having a video card destroyed from too much heat) is worth the 2 minutes.

Both systems I have the game installed on are less than 5 years old, run on Windoze 11 and are beefy. Both have their own graphics cards, ( one is a RTX 3070, the other is a RTX 3080) are water cooled, blah, blah, blah. The game runs fine, but it is still worth the time to make sure everything is good... or as good as it can be. We are talking about Maxis and EA here. Not exactly a bunch of people that care what happens on the user end when their games are installed....

I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this before, but the main reason The Sims 3 struggles to work with modern hardware is because it was built on a 32-bit platform. This limits its access to system resources like RAM, VRAM, and more. Unfortunately, we can’t change that, as it’s the way the game was originally programmed and I don't thing EA will publish 64-bit app for Windows. Ideally, they should have released it as a 64-bit application from the beginning.

In my experience with The Sims 3 over the years, before using any mods to improve performance, I started by configuring the files that control how the game uses my PC’s hardware—GraphicCards.sgr, GraphicsRules.sgr, DeviceConfig.log, and Sims3.ini. Some of the default settings in these files actually put bigger resource limits due to how they were written. For example, in GraphicsRules.sgr, if your CPU has multiple logical cores, the hyper threading value should be set to equal to 1 (hyperthreading == 1), not just greater than 0 (hyperthreading > 0 by default) - just one of many badly configured defaults (the list of mistakes is pretty long!).

Back when I had an AMD card I had to use a third-party program called RivaTuner to cap the frames at 60 as the AMD settings didn't have a native function to limit frames unlike Nvidia, one of the many reasons why I switched admittedly. It could be different these days as this was back in 2010, the windows 7 days essentially, so maybe AMD finally got their crap together. Even if they did though, I'd still check out RivaTuner if you're using an AMD card. I'm hearing from W11 AMD users from reddit that there are plenty of other useful options contained within the app that might be of help, not only for TS3 but for other games & apps too.

Here's the link to download it: https://www.guru3d.com/download/rts...erver-download/

While nowadays that makes sense, let's take a look back at 2009-2010. The majority of PC users were still using 32-bit architecture, so having the game run as 64-bit would've put a damper in the user base and probably would've made TS3 fail sales-wise. It was actually a smart move (back then) to make it a 32-bit app. As time went on though, by the time the Future EP was released most users had migrated to 64-bit by then, so they should've figured a way to do what they had done with TS4 and make a 64-bit version of TS3 as well. Though I suppose they saw no money in that.

I have completely deleted my Sims 3 folder, re-downloaded the game and get exactly the same "A serious error has occurred while loading "Sunset Valley/sim3. It is recommended that you restart the application." I did figure out that Windows 11 allows me to chose my graphics card via the "display" area of settings, so I have chosen the correct graphics card and no longer get that error message. I am using the EA App to download and run the game, so all my games and my add-ons reside on the EA app. I just have to download the ones I want and I have taken to downloading ONLY the base game because it takes so stinkin long to download only to get the error message immediately after playing one game. And never mind custom content. I cannot get the Frame work etc to be accepted at all! Why would it allow me in for ONE play and then give an error message the next time I go in? And EA are a bunch of nincompoops....they wanted the code off the disc. What the heck would that have to do with the error? UGH!! And what does "onedrive" have to do with the game? I never pay any attention to OneDrive!

Super quick question, when you say you deleted the folder did you actually do that or do an uninstall? A folder delete is not the way to go. I think there can be registry issues and so on. Others can advise more about this.

I've listened to this video and most of it is NRASS tweeks. I wish I could get a MODS folder to put their packages into!!

This is unfortunately not the same as getting the graphics card recognised. This game stopped getting full updates ten years ago, so it requires a manual edit to the game files to utilize newer cards. But this is likely unrelated to your issue, so you can ignore that step for now.


OneDrive is known for interfering with games, due to file-sync and folder mismanagement. It's a common reason for a game to not be able to access its own data (that data being accessed by OneDrive at the time) or not recognising changes to the user folder (such as Mods, because OneDrive has synced or a backup created by it is being read instead).

In fact, this seems to be the leading documented cause of this error:
https://forums.ea.com/discussions/t...ng-save/8322938

I understand it must be frustrating to try all these various things, but the questions being asked are relevant to troubleshooting this.

I can vouch for Puzzlezaddict's expertise- she's an extremely helpful volunteer over there on the EA forums who keeps tabs on all the currently known incompatibilities and errors.
If you still have the issue after following the instructions in that link, I would highly recommend posting on that forum so that she can assist you with diagnosing the issue- as it seems to be software related rather than something we can fix with a tweak or a mod.

Sounds like the classic Microsoft crap. Since I’ve never used OneNote before and I’m probably never going to use it, so I always uninstall it. If I do need these types of programs, I just switch to non-Microsoft alternatives whenever possible.

The Sims 3 Performance & Bug Fix Guide 2025