This has happened to my sims every time for the last 6 or 7 games that I've started. Sometime between weeks 3 and 6 one of them will just stop what they're doing (eg. come out of work early) or turn invisible. When they do every Sim that was on the lot with them will also 'freeze' or get stuck. If they don't turn invisible, the item they are interacting with will. The other sim (I'm playing couples) will also become unresponsive at this time (although they will appear to be continuing with that they're doing until you try to give them a command). Using ResetSim on them will teleport them back home and they will respond to commands but the animations will mess up and they get stuck again (eg. tell them to go to bed and they lie on/in the bed - not under the covers and then they will stop responding to commands. If I reset them again and go out to the main menu and back in again they will work again for a few days and then it will happen again and again (seemingly more frequently after the first incident)
I have NO CUSTOM CONTENT (not even Riverview). When this happened the first time I completely uninstalled the game and deleted all the folders (including settings and save games - even checked the registry). I did a clean reinstall and it still happens in every game I try to play some time between weeks 3 and 6.
I have had for quite some time a sort of freezing issue - the game will freeze (sounds still play, fires still flicker etc), sometimes it can freeze for a couple of minutes but it always eventually unfreezes - and carries on from the point it froze (if I open task manager I see that its using about 1% CPU for the Sims but I'm not able to switch to any other programs until it unfreezes. That issue was annoying but I could still play. Now I can't play .
I first had the problem maybe a week ago. I play 'challenges' and the last couple have played through fine (both since the latest patch) - one was a single sim (plus butler) - pretty much stayed home writing all the time for 12 weeks, with a couple of vacations. The other one was a 4 man race so that only lasted a couple of weeks.
