Hi i am in need of desperate help... I just bought the sims 3 starter pack yesterday and have been going nuts to download it and get it to work... i know its been awhile since i played the sims but geez it should be a cake walk to get it to work right.... but what happens is i have a gateway laptop with windows 8.1 operating system, (which i hate) and i installed the game on to it.. going fine, then when i go to play it, it keeps asking for me to activate the game when i already did that thru origin.... and when i put the product code numbers in it says number already been used... and it wont let me play the game.. i'm about to pull my hair out trying to figure this game out.. can anyone help me please??????? i know its a matter of something i'm not doing right, so i know i am missing something.. thank you .... in advance if you can help.. i miss playing my sims and i want to play them again....

Is that the exact error description? 'Already been used'? Where you to try to active it? If you license key are installed on more than 5 PC's (Regarding if you uninstalled some of the EPs, etc.) it will say invalid license key or similar. So if you have used the game on more than 5 computers through the years, this is a known issue. But only to Origin games though It can be fixed by going to EA Support Chat, ask them to get a new license key and place in in HK_Registry. I can elaborate if you indeed have that error, if you could type the exact saying of the error description..

If you still have access to some of the older computers with the games installed, you can 'deactive' their use of the license through Launcher.

You might also want to reconsider buying from that shop/website/person again, as it sounds like they may have sold you pirated goods.