Category: Origin

Origin Installs and Saves location fixed for external drives

Published on by BluebellFlora6 Comments

When did this happen? It must have been over the last few weeks as it hasn’t been that long since I played around with changing game library location to an external drive for some random testing purpose. For the last few years changing the game library location in Origin to an external drive has been a painful experience thanks to Volumes not properly showing in the chooser window:

Now it looks like a proper macOS window and no need to jump through hoops to get the external drive to show up:

(If you’re not sure what I’m referring to, have a look at this guide from November 2020)

I don’t remember seeing the option to change Install location once clicking on Download and choosing which Packs to install, is that new or maybe I’m just too weary when it comes to Origin:

This is a great fix and a long time coming 🙂

Crashing caused by Origin avatar

Published on by BluebellFloraLeave a comment

Of course, there are many reasons why the game can crash – out of date CC/Mods, corrupted save, gameplay bug, low spec. machine, Origin in-game enabled, lots of different reasons. One of the current reasons since the December patch is down to the user’s Origin avatar. We have had this before but it was fixed a few months ago. It is also a common cause of Gallery crashes for Mac users.

If your game is crashing, and your avatar in Origin looks like this, you need to change it and it may fix your crashing problem:

Origin avatar crash image

To fix it open Origin, click on your profile in the bottom left corner then click on the orange button saying EA Account and Billing next to your profile image in the main window:

EA Account and Billing

In the browser window that opens click on your profile picture and choose a new avatar. You can upload your own or choose one from the avatar gallery.

Once you have changed it quit Origin and restart and you should be good to go.

Red and white sims, missing content, llamas, incomplete data

Published on by BluebellFlora5 Comments

There’s always something so satisfying about finally experiencing an issue that is a recurring problem for others.

This was after updating the game installation on my iMac to the December patch:

I tried all of the following to fix this:

  • Repair base game
  • Super repair by trashing The Sims 4 executable file in Sims 4.app/Contents/Mac OS then repairing before loading
  • Trashed the ClientFullBuild0.package file from each DLC Pack to force a re-download
  • Trashed the entire Sims 4 Packs folder so all packs were re-downloaded
  • Trashed the Delta folder in Sims 4.app/Contents
  • Trashed the Data folder in Sims 4.app/Contents
  • Uninstalled the game and reinstalled completely. Did this twice both to the internal drive and changed location to external

But none of that worked, even a new game installation didn’t work. I then did the following:

  • Uninstalled the game
  • Ran the Origin reset tool
  • Deleted the residual files that the reset tool doesn’t delete
  • Trashed the Origin app
  • Emptied the trash
  • Restarted the Mac
  • Downloaded and installed Origin
  • Downloaded and installed the game plus all packs

And that fixed it. Looks like Origin, yet again, is to blame for another catastrophic game failure. I managed to put my Sims 4 folder containing my saves, mods and other content back into the game with no problems.

This problem seems to be down to corrupted downloads and seems more prevalent after an update, as reported by others at Answers HQ. If you’re experiencing this, make sure you back up your Sims 4 folder and be prepared to completely uninstall the game AND Origin in order to fix it 😡