I recently decided to install all my old The Sims 1 games on my new laptop.

They seemed to install quite happily but when I tried to run the game, it would crash straight away.

After spending a lot of time searching for help, the only advice I could find was to:

run the game as administrator

use windows compatibility mode

None of which worked for me. 🙁

Not one to give up easily when I’ve set my mind to something, I spent a lot time uninstalling, reinstalling, complaining, brandishing-a-screwdriver-at-my-laptop-in-a-simlike-menacing-fashion… until FINALLY something worked! I’m not quite sure what that something was, but let me talk you through the steps I took, and hopefully it will work for you too! ^.^

First make sure any old installation attempts are completely removed! First, uninstall any old sims 1 games using the windows control panel. Then open up your files with Explorer and remove all traces of the game from C: Program Files and Program Files (x86). I just deleted the whole Maxis folder, but be careful you don’t accidentally delete any other Maxis games that might share the file.

At this point it might be a good idea to restart your computer, just to keep things tidy.

Pop the base game disk into the drive but DON’T let it auto-run. Cancel out anything that pops up. Now, using Explorer, click on the disk, open the ‘Set-up’ file and double-click the file ‘Setup_English’ to run it (I guess you could choose any language).

The installation process should have started. Follow the instructions BUT when it asks you to choose a location, change it from ‘Program Files (x86)’ to ‘Program Files’. So it will have the destination ‘C/Program Files/Maxis’ (I just deleted the ‘(x86)’ bit).

You can follow the installation as normal. You don’t need to register the game, you can choose ‘register later’.

Once everything is installed, DON’T use the launcher to run the game. Instead, open up the newly installed Maxis folder (which should be in C/Program Files). Open the ‘The Sims’ folder and find the application file simply called ‘Sims’ (for me it has a blue octagon shaped icon). Right-click the icon and choose ‘Run as administrator’.

Hopefully your game should run!

I installed all the expansions in the same way, by ignoring the auto-run, and running the installation by finding the ‘Setup_English’ file instead. It seems to automatically follow the same destination as the base game, so you don’t need to worry about that. Just remember to avoid the launcher and run the ‘Sims’ application as administrator each time.

I find that I can’t jump between windows while playing: the game will either freeze or the graphics will go all glitchy. So once your playing you can’t pause to tweet about Bella slapping Bob Newbie. But at least the game is quick to load and save!

Feel free to ask me for help and I’ll do my best! You can always find me on the official Sims 3 forums or on Twitter! ^.^

Good luck and Happy Simming!