Hi! I have been having this same issue for a few days now. When I click on other interactable items, such as a table, the menu pops up quickly with no problem. On the contrary, selecting a sim, other sims, or a computer takes a significantly longer time to load. Clicking on a non-selected sim being the longest. I have followed your steps in the thread, as well as attached the messages received once I completed them. I attached the DxDiag file as well as my view from the Task Manager. As you can observe, the CPU is very high. I'm not quite sure how to reduce it from here. I also ran the scan on sfc, and the first time I received a message that it found corrupt files. After following the rest of the instructions and running sfc again, this was fixed, and I did not receive the error message again. I also repaired the Sims 4 game through the EA app. I disabled nearly everything in the Startup menu except for Windows Security. Despite these efforts, my game still has the same delay as described. Earlier, I had a bug where the menu would not appear completely upon clicking on another sim or any sim for that matter. It had appeared another mod was messing with the UI. This was reported to me by the BetterExceptions mod. I fixed the issue and have not encountered it again. Though the problems are similar, I do not think they are the same. I believe it may be the high percentage of the CPU, although I don't know how to fix this. If you have some suggestions, they would be extremely appreciated. Thank you!
@emilyffaye Thanks for covering the basic troubleshooting steps and providing all this info. It makes my job a lot easier. You're correct that the CPU use is the most likely culprit, but unfortunately, your laptop's hardware makes addressing that difficult. First of all, the processor is quite weak for Sims 4 even if it's technically over the minimum requirement. So the CPU use will probably always be high, and the question is how much you can bring it down.
The easiest step is of course to run no other apps while you play. The best practice is to restart your computer before launching the game to free up as much RAM as possible (more on that later), and make sure that no apps are set to start with Windows. For that, check the Startup tab, and disable anything you don't absolutely need. You can always run these programs manually.
It can help to put the EA App in offline mode as well. This will probably prevent you from using the Gallery, but you could browse the Gallery in a separate play session, then quit, restart, and play in offline mode when you're ready.
Another issue contributing to the CPU load, perhaps in a major way, is the fact that your laptop has only 4 GB RAM and a very small page file. The low RAM means the processor has to send excess data that would normally be in RAM to the page file, which is a space reserved on the C drive for this purpose. Swapping files back and forth takes CPU resources, and the more memory apps want to use, the more swapping has to happen. This is why I suggested not running anything alongside Sims 4.
On your laptop, this is further complicated by the somewhat small and almost entirely used page file. Normally, I'd show you how to increase its size and leave it at that. But your C drive has only 11 GB free, which is technically enough to prevent storage-related issues, but decreasing that to more like 5 GB could have other significant consequences. So before increasing the page file, please try to free up more space on C, and let me know how much progress you make.
Hi again! I really appreciate your quick and detailed response! And yes, the biggest deal is that my laptop's hard drive is significantly small. Unfortunately, over half of it is taken up by window's required files. I have very little downloaded onto my laptop besides the EA app. I did manage to free up a little bit of space. I will still try and free some more space in the meantime. I also have another question. Since the hard drive that my laptop was made with is so teeny tiny, I did purchase an external hard drive to help with storage. Is it possible I can utilize this external storage in increasing said page file, or is it necessary it be my systems built-in hard drive? All of this is new to me, so I thank you again!
@emilyffaye It's worth looking through Apps & Features and Other, in your first screenshot, to see whether anything else could be deleted or reinstalled on the secondary drive. While you're never going to have a lot of space on C, even a few gigabytes can help.
To answer your question, yes, technically you can move the entire page file to your external drive. However, if it's an mechanical drive (HDD), which appears to be the case from your second screenshot, that would only make things worse. Your laptop's internal drive is much faster than the fastest HDDs, and the swapping back and forth between RAM and the page file needs to be fast so as not to impact performance even more than you're seeing already.
At any rate, you can add another few GB to the page file to get back to where you were, with 11 GB free. Here's how (option one):
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/77692-manage-virtual-memory-pagefile-windows-10-a.html#option1
I would set the minimum size to 8000 and the max to 12288, which should put you back at 11 GB free, but double-check the free storage after restarting your computer anyway.
Aside from this, disabling any other apps from starting with Windows, running nothing alongside Sims 4, and playing with the EA App in offline mode, there really isn't anything else you can do. I guess you could experiment with in-game options, for example avoiding San Myshuno or the eco footprint effects or the lot traits that involve wild animals, but I'm not sure how much those would help or if they're even contributing to the problem. There is, unfortunately, only so much you can do with your laptop's hardware.
Hi! So, I followed the instructions concerning the page file, it seems like the changes applied but I really didn't notice much difference in the game? My computer is also telling me the C drive has 14.9GB of storage left. Do I need to do anything else?
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