HELP! my sims 3 game wont start?

my sims 3 game wont start. i can go on to the launcher and press the big blue button and my whole screen will go black like the game is about to load and then it just goes back to my desktop screen , but its showing in my tabs saying its running. and i now it not anything to do with the system requirements because i was playing the game earlier today. BTW i have and alienware m11x laptop and im running on windows 7. Please help if you can i would really like to know if its the game or if its my laptop. :)