How to fix 'The Sims 2: Super Collection' crashing on launch due to a saved display resolution issue

Question

Level 1

4 points

How to fix 'The Sims 2: Super Collection' crashing on launch due to a saved display resolution issue

Posting this as a new discussion because the existing thread on this crash is closed, and it has 7 "Me too" votes and no working answer:

The Sims 2: Super Collection Crashing upo… - Apple Community

THE SYMPTOM

The Sims 2: Super Collection works fine. Then, from one day to the next, it crashes about 7 seconds after you click Play — every single launch, forever after. Nothing was installed or updated in between. The crash report says:

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Subtype: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000

and the stack ends in __cxa_throw -> failed_throw -> std::__terminate.

Read that bottom-up: the game throws a C++ exception, nothing catches it, so the runtime kills the process. The "0x0" is a side effect of that, not the bug itself — which is why searching for "null pointer" leads nowhere.

THE CAUSE

The game saves the exact display mode you last picked, in this file:

~/Library/Containers/com.aspyr.sims2.appstore/Data/Library/Application Support/Aspyr/The Sims 2/Config/userProps.xml

in a line that looks like this:

If that display mode does not exist on the screen you are currently using, the game crashes at startup. It never falls back to a valid mode.

Here is the trap, and it is what makes this so confusing. I picked a higher resolution in-game while an external monitor was plugged in, because the picture looked soft on it. That setting is only written to disk when you QUIT the game — so that entire session kept working fine. Later I played on the laptop screen alone: that mode no longer existed, and the game crashed on every launch from then on, in a session where I had changed absolutely nothing.

That is why it looks like the game "worked, then randomly broke".

THE FIX

Quit the game, open that userProps.xml in a text editor, and set the value to a resolution your current display actually supports. On the built-in display of an Apple Silicon laptop, the game's own "Screen size" list contains exactly one entry — mine was 1470x956, so:

The format is WIDTHxHEIGHTxDEPTHxREFRESH. A refresh rate of 0 means "whatever the display does".

If you don't know your value, just delete userProps.xml instead — the game regenerates it with correct auto-detected defaults on the next launch. You lose your graphics settings, not your saves.

It will come back every time you change resolution on an external screen and then unplug it. That is simply how the game behaves.

WHAT IS NOT THE CAUSE (so you don't waste an afternoon like I did)

- Your neighborhoods. I ran the game with a completely empty user data folder and it still crashed. Please don't delete your saves over this.

- Groups.cache / Accessory.cache. The classic Sims 2 advice. No effect.

- Reinstalling the game. I verified the app bundle with "codesign --verify --deep": byte-for-byte intact the whole time.

- A macOS update. Mine updated BEFORE the last session that worked fine.

- Safe Mode or repairing the disk. Neither is relevant here.

- The graphics quality sliders. I was convinced these were the culprit and I was wrong: I re-ran the game with lighting, effects and textures all on High plus a valid resolution, and it runs perfectly. The resolution was the only thing that ever mattered.

ONE CAVEAT

If you have never plugged an external monitor into this Mac, this may not be your cause — but the file takes ten seconds to check, and deleting it is harmless.

Also worth knowing: Aspyr has a known-issue page for Sims 2 crashing on Apple Silicon whose workaround is "set your monitor's refresh rate to 60 Hz or less". Same family of bug — the game chokes on a display mode it cannot use — but it did not cover my case, since my laptop panel is already 60 Hz. If that workaround didn't help you either, check the saved resolution.

Verified on one machine: M2 MacBook Air, macOS 26.5, Mac App Store build. On non-App-Store builds the file is the same, it just won't be under Containers — look for Aspyr/The Sims 2/Config/userProps.xml under your user Library or Documents.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: The Sims 2: Super Collection crashes on launch after you've played once — cause and fix (it's a saved display resolution)

MacBook Air (M2, 2022)

Posted on Jul 14, 2026 10:14 AM

Reply