I bought my little sister ''The Sims 3'' a while back and the first few weeks it was alright, until it randomly shut down with no warning. I heard a faint popping noise and the screen went black. So I turned it back on, and it started again. My sister had to play it all again.
It's been happening a lot, so what's the problem?
By the sound of it, and i am no professional. It sounds like its your laptop that could be getting too old to support the game. It happened to me once, when my PC was so full that everything slows down and lag. I deleted some files and it worked better. I suggest the same for you :)
"it randomly shut down with no warning" Is this just the game crashing or the whole computer
Have you tried to isolate what the "faint popping noise " may have been?
Did you check the event viewer to see if there were any errors logged?
You say it has been happening a lot.
Have you run the computer without playing ''The Sims 3'' to see if it does the same thing ?
What are the system specs? Does your machine seem to be hot when you hear the "faint popping noise"?
Just based purely on what you just listed, my guess would be:
-Overheating
-Some hardware or component is failing (maybe something hit one of the computer's fans and created that "pop" sound)
My suggestion is first, download a temperature monitoring software (I use something called HWMonitor, which is free). Then when playing the game, alt+tab and see what temperature it hits. Anything near 80 degrees Celsius is the dangerzone for most PC parts. If it gets to 100 degrees Celsius, I know some computers have an automatic shutdown feature to prevent parts from getting too hot and catching on fire.
Nonetheless, it would be a good idea to clean out the insides of the computer. Although you haven't specified whether or not its a desktop or laptop computer your sister is using, it'd be good to purchase a can of compressed air and with the nozzle blow out some dust that may be clogging the fans' exhaust.
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