Error,  Launcher

Black Screen, long loading times and TMP files in DCCache

June 22, 2013 /

Problem

  • After the installation of Patch 1.55, my game doesn’t load. All I get is a black screen.
  • My Launcher takes forever to load now.

Cause

The causes for those issues aren’t solved completely yet and everything written here is a mere assumption. It might be completely not true. To discuss the tmp files, please post here: TMP Files in DCCache

Make sure you remove all your mods to be certain that the black screen issue isn’t cause by an incompatible mod. Best is to do a complete Factory Reset.

Downloadedsims.index in SavedSims seems also to be a source of issues. Delete the file. It will be recreated

If you are on Windows 8.1, check if .Net is enabled:

  1. Go to your tiled screen and start writing Windows Feature. 
  2. Click on Turn Windows features on or off
  3. Make sure .net is ticked
    NetFramework

Purpose of the TMP files

Patch 1.55 has the following bug fix

Users who have a large amount of Store content installed will no longer experience their content disappearing from the launcher.

My assumption is that EA solved this issue by creating the tmp files you now find in your DCCache folder. Unfortunately, this doubles the amount of files/gb the game needs to load which means that people that have 4 GB of Store Content now have 8 GB to load.

I can imagine older/weaker computers having real issues with that.

This fix has nothing to do with the problem where installed Store content doesn’t show up in game but only with the fact that the launcher wasn’t able to display all your content when you had tons installed which made it difficult to uninstall a certain content if it was no longer needed

Solution

The way it looks now, those TMP files are only need to make sure everything shows in your launcher. It’s not needed to have them show up in game. Because of this, you can just delete the files. They are recreated if you restart the launcher.

Bypass the launcher to prevent them from recreating and delete them again after you have used the launcher to install something.

If the black screen issue persists even you have removed all your user files, reinstall the base game only.

Credits
roberta591

Further Reading