More Awesome Than You!

I just installed a retail version after uninstalling a non-retail one and now when I try to patch it spits that out at me. I have no idea what happened as I had taken all of the cc out when I uninstalled and haven't put it back in yet. I also ran the game once to generate the document files but still nothing. I even tried the manual uninstall but when I got to the part about going into tools in program files to see the hidden files, I couldn't find that at all. I'm on Vista if it makes any difference and I admit my knowledge about computers is intermediate.

If this particular problem has been dealt with, please direct me to that thread as I haven't seen this specific occurrence in my searching.

I don't know whether you mean "non-retail" to be the EA store downloadable version or an independently distributed version. The EA store version will have installed SecuRom, if so, removal instructions are in another thread on thos board. In both cases, the registry will still have the old keycode in it, you will need to remove that and use the new one from your retail package to get registered and so on.

I think he means he had an arred version of the game and then he got a legit one.


If so, then your problem is that probably the uninstaller was just borked, that happens even on legit versions of the game, and thus leaving trash behind any uninstall or worse, failing to succesfully uninstalling the whole thing.

In order to fix this, you'll have to remove all files manually and then run the RegEdit (don't know how to do that on Vista :(), once there, do a search of "Eletronic Arts" or "Sims3"/"The Sims 3" and remove the files that are shown on the results, but BEWARE!, make sure you don't delete other non-sims3 values, otherwise you will royally f*ck up your computer.

After that your new install of the retail version of TS3 will run normally, or at least that worked for me, don't do anything I wrote above if you're not 100% sure about it, I don't want you to come here crying if you suck at Registry Editor and did it all wrong.


Hope that helps, if that's the case.

With either the downloadable or arred version, you have to get rid of that key from the registry, and use the one that came with your retail package.

But the EA downloadable also uses SecuRom, so if he had that, he needs to do an exorcism.

I hate EA for being so lazy


So, what version was it the first you had installed, Nikki?

I have been getting this error as well.  I recently decided to re-install the game and when I try to install the patch, the error pops up.  After manually uninstalling everything, I sent an email to EA.  They have suggested saving the game in another file, saving the launcher in another file, and creating another account on my computer and installing the game there.  None of that has worked though.

Along with this, I also cannot download the items I bought in the store or Riverview but I can download items from the exchange.  I have found sites that have the old patches and cannot download those either.  If anyone has any ideas on how to fix this, I would really appreciate it.

Edited to add:  I can install and play the game, just not with the patch.

I found out how to fix the problem. You have to go into msconfig and click hide windows files, then disable all in both sections. Restart the computer then try to apply the patch. Apparently ,one of the start up programs was blocking the application.

What do you mean by disable all in both sections?  Will I need to enable them again once I get the path installed?