Carl's Sims 3 Guide - Skills, Traits, Careers, Rewards, and Lifetime Wishes for Ambitions and World Adventures
Affiliated with The Sims Wiki
Affiliated with Simprograms

The Sims 3 Technical Help Articles

Game Fixes and How-Tos for Common Problems

This section of the guide is a compendium of information found on our Technical Help Board. I have brought it to the guide to give it more visibility to our readers. Not only do we offer great information about The Sims 3 and its Expansions, we can also help you fix common problems. You'll also find how-tos for things like backing up.

Gathering this information is a new project as of 11/23/11. It will take time to publish all of the information, but it seemed prudent to get it out there!

How-Tos

Backup and Restore
Thanks PJSim
This is a great article that will teach you how to back up everything: your game saves, custom content, and all other downloads. What is more, it also covers restoring information. If you run windows and aren't great with computers, this could be a big help to you. There's no need to lose your data!

Install and Reinstall
Thanks Pam Marsden
I used Pam's information for manually uninstalling The Sims 3 to craft a mini guide to installing them. As a result, this page covers both. If your game doesn't uninstall cleanly from the control panel, and you need to reinstall the game, you can delete the necessary data yourself with this guide.

Speed Up Game by Clearing Caches
Thanks to RockinRobin, Grimsoul
This article details how to clear The Sims 3 cache. As you play, the game can slowly choke on the cache. Clearing this out can make the game run without consuming nearly as much memory.



Jump to Top


Disclaimer: - This site is not endorsed by or affiliated with Electronic Arts, or its licensors. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The Sims and The Sims 3 Logo are trademarks of Electronic Arts, Inc. Game content and materials copyright Electronic Arts Inc. and its licensors. All Rights Reserved. All original material on this site © Carl Ratcliff.
Carl's PC Gaming Sites, Strategy Guides and Walkthroughs
Privacy PolicyThe Sims 3The Sims MedievalSims 3 CommunitySkyrim
Starcraft 2 GuideRift Class GuideCiv 5 GuideFallout 3 GuidePam's Blog
  • Carl's Sims 3 Site News

I have a couple of cool new offerings from James Giddings, who not only shared valuable data on transfiguring tiberium, he also gave us a couple of handy autohotkey scripts to share.

Folks who hate the long load time when first starting their game, especially when it comes to loading a Dynasty or Legacy file, will appreciate the first offering. Jagid's Autolauncher is not a mod, but will help you all the same. Run this script from your desktop after a brief and easy configuration, and it will automatically open Sims 3, cancel the video, load the most recent saved game and pause your game when it's done. Automating this process lets you go do something else with your valuable time while the game loads. The second offering is a gem cut calculator, which will tell you just how much profit you'll make from a gem using the various cuts available. Download it from our gems page.

Building Contest #10 is up:

"Once Upon a Time...." That may be the start of a story but it's your job to set the scene! How can we have a story if there is nowhere for the story to be set? What would the Pigs do without their three houses, where would Snow White and the Seven Dwarves live? They need their homes and they've got to be right from a storybook!

Pam's Dreamweaver DecaDynasty Story is up to date. Here is where we last left off. If you ever want to check for the most recent, see her topic on the forum.

  • Search our Sims 3 Site
  • Latest Forum Posts