Extremely Long Loading Times

@Kazuzi3 

There are a couple of issues.

Never EVER defragment an SSD. Luckily Windows 10 will ignore such an order and instead run TRIM so unless you used a third party defrag program no harm was done.

Your Graphics driver is a year old. Visit https://downloadcenter.intel.com/ to upgrade.

The realtek drivers constantly crashes. Look for new drivers and run SFC /scannow

@jpkarlsen 

Trimming was the better word to use, but I didn't know what the word was.

I had updated all of my drivers and it did not change anything. I still went onto the intel website and it also said that there were no updates available for the graphics driver, so that's not the issue here. There was some type of storage driver there was an update to, so I updated that, but everything else was updated already since that was one of the many things I did before posting here.

I haven't done the sfc/scannow yet, but I will try that soon.

I've uninstalled Sims 4 and am in the process of redownloading it, to see if anything changes, it's just going to take a while to redownload everything...

I'm starting to think maybe it's an issue with Origin itself. I think when I opened it on Wednesday night, it updated and that's right around the time when the issues started since I didn't try to play the game until Thursday. I've noticed that trying to run anything else on my computer while origin is open causes everything to get very slow even if origin is just sitting idle and not downloading anything. That was never an issue before, so maybe something happened with the update that is causing an issue. Once Sims is finished downloading and I have time, I'll try to see if running origin offline and trying to run Sims to see if that changes anything. Too bad you need origin in order to run sims or I would just try to delete Origin and see if that's the actual issue.

@Kazuzi3 

The graphics driver is here: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/126789/Intel-UHD-Graphics-620

it is from June. Your current driver is a year old.

Would it do anything to just install a completely different graphics driver than the one already on my computer? How do I know it is compatible?

@jpkarlsen 

I tried to update the graphics driver and it said it was unable to and told me to go to the manufacturers website for the updated driver (I've attached the specific error messages to this post). I went to the manufacturer website and there are no updates available for the graphics card through them either. The only other thing it recommended to do is to try to download a generic Intel graphic driver, but it said it may impact the performance of my computer, so I'm not sure if I want to go that route. Do you have any suggestions?

I'm still thinking it might be something Origin related, but I can't figure out quite how. I'm still getting very long loading times, but they are just slightly shorter when Origin is in online mode. When I start up Sims 4 with Origin running and online, it took 15 minutes from the time I clicked to open Sims 4 until the main menu popped up. During that time, it said "not responding" three times and there were a number of visual things on startup and the loading screen that were lagging. When I ran switched Origin into offline mode, it still took 12 minutes from the time I clicked to open Sims 4 until the main menu popped up, but there were no times where it said "not responding" and there was no visual lag. I still experienced the same issues outside of the game that I experienced before. When Origin is open and online, other programs on my computer begin to lag and freeze up; when Origin is closed or offline, everything works properly. I submitted a report through the Origin Error Reporter so that if it is an issue with Origin like I think it is, maybe something can be worked on to fix it.

You are not alone. Since downloading Island Living I've had the same problem. I tested it today and it took me 11 mins to get to the main menu and then 15 mins to load into a house. I removed all my mods and again took me 11 mins to get to the main menu but only 5 mins to load into a house to play. When I did get into a house, it's been incredibly lagtastic. It's to the point that it's unplayable for me. Lag still occurred without the mods. 

I'm just now starting to try and fix the problem. 

@jpkarlsen Ok... so it magically works again, but I'm not sure what exactly I did to fix it. After taking it off of airplane mode, I put origin back into offline mode and turned off laptop mode in the graphics settings. The game then rebooted fine and I was able to load the main menu in about 30 seconds and into a household within about 2 minutes. I turned laptop mode back on to see if that's what the issue was, but the game still ran fine. I even tried messing with other graphics settings that I knew I had changed, and it made no difference in loading time. Loading time is back to normal. I don't think taking it off of laptop mode and putting laptop mode back on was what made the difference though as I did that several times through this whole ordeal.

The only thing I can think of that I changed since trying the last time was putting my computer into airplane mode and then turning airplane mode back off. A lot of the problems originally started when I was having issues with slow internet and had put my computer into airplane mode so I could use the limited internet I had to watch Stranger Things. I've done similar things before with turning airplane mode on and off and never had an issue like this before.

The problem with Origin making other programs on my computer slow has also resolved itself since turning airplane mode on and off. So... I'm not sure if there was an issue with airplane mode on my computer that caused this whole mess (you would think that restarting my computer multiple times would have cleared it from airplane mode though) or if there was some type of issue with airplane mode that caused an issue with Origin since Origin worked fine in offline mode, but not online while this whole debacle was unfolding.

Also you would think that if it was an issue with airplane mode, when I tested opening it with airplane mode on, the issue would have gotten better, but it didn't.

I really have no clue what happened to fix it, but I'm glad it's loading again.

As an unrelated side note, every time I load into a lot now I get an error saying a build mode item was removed even when I didn't have any mods installed and when I opened lots that I had not edited or opened before. That was happening a lot too before the whole mess happened, so I'm not sure if it's related, but I'm thinking probably not...

@Kazuzi3 

If you downloaded the lots from the Gallery they may have contained either CC or items from a pack you do not own. This will cause the "Item was removed" message.