White loading screen and missing menu strings after patch 1.55

[necromunchy]

After a couple of years, I've decided to stop the painful rehab and reinstall TS3.
Due to past mistakes, I have been installing one expansion at a time and testing if the game launches properly after each.
After all seemed fine, I've decided to make a leap of faith and patch to 1.55.
A mistake I will not repeat any time soon.




Mods I currently have installed (for testing purposes alone) are awesomemod and nointro. Removing them doesn't influence this issue the slightest.


Googling brought me to several similar problems, most of them including the uncanny white loading screen. However, most of them solved the issue by a clean reinstall.
As reverting to older patches is not that simple, I have tried reinstalling the last three expansion packs to see if it would make a difference. It didn't.

What I would love to know is whether a complete reinstall is absolutely necessary, or if there's perhaps something obvious that I'm missing.


[EDIT]

Well, this happens when all but the stuff packs remain

[Juan Sfalcin]

Do you use a crack? Try leaving only the original files from the game in and moving your Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 folder to a backup one. And then use a mini image.

[necromunchy]

Thank you for the reply, Juan Sfalcin, however, the suggestion didn't help a bit.
Due to lack of nerves and the fact that I have already spent more than 20 hours installing the game, I have uninstalled everything and begun a clean install.
Hopefully it will be done around this time tomorrow.

[Skoria_bay]

Also Do NOT install the latest patch (patch to 1.50) as Awesome Mod has not been updated yet. Do not patch to 1.55 until the All Clear has been given here.

[necromunchy]

Here's an update. A discovery, if you will. After installing a newer stuff pack directly onto the base game (to avoid update times), the loading screen got messed up again, and the text on the menu was gone.
Uninstalling the stuff pack didn't fix the issue, so I need to reinstall the base game yet again.

Thank you for the reply, Skoria_bay, I will definitely do as you've suggested.


[Edit which i sure hope will be noticed]

Reinstalled everything and still no menu strings.
The loading screen is fine now though, the colour misbehaving could have been caused by the latest patch.

Not sure if this has anything to do with the base game complaining that it cannot recognize my graphics card. It didn't exist back when the base game had it's list of supported written, but it's supported.
First two times, I've set the resolution to native upon first launch, but this third time I've skipped that step and proceeded installing EP-s. Now, alongside menus being blank, I also have a stretched screen and blurry graphics. The joy.

What exactly does cause the text to disappear?

[Edit 2, though it seems pointless as it's unlikely anyone will bump into this topic again]

Tried uninstalling expansion by expansion, stuff pack by stuff pack. Got back to the base game, but the problem is still there.
Installed the 1.55 patch to see if there's any difference. There was none.
Now, for my lucky seventh time, I will try installing the base game (which alone works fine) and update it to 1.55 to see if the patch itself hates me, or just a certain combination of expansions I plan on having installed.
What a good way to waste a week.

[uknortherner]

You've not indicated what hardware specs/OS you're running. Is it just the card that's recent, or is it your entire PC? If it's just the card that's new, then have you tried deleting all references to The Sims 3 from the Windows registry (I'm assuming you're running Windows and not the Mac OS)?

You might want to look at this if you're having trouble getting TS3 to recognise your card:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Getting_new_graphics_cards_recognized_by_the_game

Don't forget that later EPs introduced changes to the water shaders that may in turn be giving you grief with the loading screen/missing text, and apparently the latest patch messes with the lighting, going off what people over at SimsVIP are saying.

[necromunchy]

Thank you Utterly Unzipped and uknortherner for replying (and bumping the topic).
After eight times of completely reinstalling the game in full, carefully following the installation instructions given by Games4theworld, who have very recently made a fix that addresses the newest patch, I have given up hope that it was perhaps something I'm doing wrong myself.

I remember once messing with the .sgr files, back when i had gtx 460. But I don't remember how I managed to fix it (necessary disclaimer, I have serious memory issues).
Looking at the lines, I can't quite distinguish where would my card fit at the moment, while the device ID is a set of numbers ctrl+f isn't finding in DeviceConfig.log at all.
I would very much appreciate some help on the matter if anyone has the will and time to give a few guidelines.

Dxdiag info attached to this post, if it's of any use.

Thank you in advance!


[mini edit, since I just realized that I haven't answered the question]

My gpu is the newest addition to the pc. The rest of it is of various age.
I have manually been deleting registry files upon every uninstallation, and cache files every time I've closed the game.
Secondly, what I've noticed is that the in-game console is fully functional. Didn't manage to do anything useful with it (as in, enter the neighbourhood), but it could be a useful information.



STOP THE PRESS!

Removing awesome.package makes the game playable.
But a question remains - is a game without awesomemod really worth playing?
(and how does everyone else pass it with 1.55, since I've read a thing or two saying that there are no major issues)

[Skadi]

I won't patch until the AM for 1.55 comes out, and will probably do it in conjunction with installing the new EP that comes out next week.

Either treat yourself to some casual play sans AM or install again and stop at 1.50.

[Skoria_bay]

Even thought NRAAS has updated their mods to 1.55, I'm waiting for AM to get ready to go. Plus I know AM will fix any stuff EA broke with the patch. I'm being patient in the meantime.

[wizard_merlin]

STOP THE PRESS!

Removing awesome.package makes the game playable.
But a question remains - is a game without awesomemod really worth playing?
(and how does everyone else pass it with 1.55, since I've read a thing or two saying that there are no major issues)

Wow, what a revelation, the 1.50 version of AM is incompatible with the 1.55 Patch, who would have thought such a thing.

[kissing_toast]

STOP THE PRESS!

Removing awesome.package makes the game playable.
But a question remains - is a game without awesomemod really worth playing?
(and how does everyone else pass it with 1.55, since I've read a thing or two saying that there are no major issues)

[Dark Trepie]

2013
Installing patches before mods are updated

[jezzer]