Game freezing and crashing after update

@landstriderx  As a test, please try playing in a clean user folder.  Move the entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents > Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, and when you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  (Your saves and other content will be intact in the folder you moved but temporarily not read by the game.)  Don't add anything to the new folder yet; just start a new save and see how it runs.

After loading the new save, please put Sims 4 into windowed mode and open the Task Manager, specifically to the Processes tab.  If the game freezes or starts to lag, switch to the Task Manager (but don't minimize Sims 4) and take a screenshot of what it's showing.  Please upload this screenshot to a reply here.

Please run a dxdiag and attach it as well.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

Thanks so much for your help! The game worked a bit better using a clean folder but still did have issues. I'm attaching a screenshot of Task Manager when it was struggling (CPU % got up to 99% at its highest). I'm also including a text file of the dxdiag. 

@landstriderx  I'm not surprised that CPU use got that high given your laptop's hardware.  As a side note, is there a reason you play in Windows and not macOS?  You should be able to play on the Mac side with around the same performance, and you'd also have access to a newer graphics driver that might work better with Sims 4.  But perhaps you have other reasons to prefer this setup.

I know this test was in a clean folder, but was it with your current save or a new one?  Does it help to put the EA App in offline mode before launching Sims 4?  Other than a lack of access to the Gallery, the game should run the same as it always does.

Hi again and thanks for your help! I used to play with Mac for the Sims 3 but I noticed the game ran much slower on Mac and had significantly more lag so I switched to Windows and have stayed with Windows for Sims 4. I would definitely be willing to reconsider this though as I have access to both.

I did update my drivers (apparently I hadn't done so for two years) and use EA in offline mode and it ran so much better! Almost everything is working perfectly now, thank you so much! Now I only have problems with one specific save file crashing and all others work fine. I know that's not the topic of this thread, but do you have advice for fixing corrupt save files as well?

I used this guide (https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2014/09/save-games/#wiederherstellen) to try and restore an old save file but all the backup files listed were saved after I started having problems so I am a little stuck now. Thank you again for your help so far!

@landstriderx  Do you get an in-game error message when you're playing the save?  When does it crash: right when you load it or after you've been playing for a while, and if the latter, is there any pattern to the crashing?  How large is this save?  You can see the file size in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > saves; you can sort by date modified to find your most recent saves.

If the game is running well in Windows right now, other than this one save, then there's no reason to switch back to macOS.  But it's something to keep in mind for the future, especially if you run into more performance issues and can't update the graphics driver further.  I don't know how much support Apple is going to continue to provide for your laptop: Bootcamp drivers have never been updated as quickly as I'd like, and newer Macs can't be Bootcamped at all, so it might not be a priority.

No I don't get an error message, and it crashes after I've been playing for about five minutes -- other than that, no real pattern. I did take a look at the save file size and it's huge -- most of my saves are about 5,000 KB and this one is over 50,000. I started a fresh save file and moved the same family in from the gallery but I've noticed the save is already getting bigger again even though I just started. I'm not sure how this file is different than the rest -- do you think it could be a CC problem? Or is it maybe logging more information than other saves for some reason?

Thanks again for your help!

@landstriderx  Please test with no mods or custom content present, in fact test in a clean user folder.  Move the entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents > Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, and when you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  You can download this existing household from the Gallery and see if the save starts getting larger.  If it does, then please test with new sims you create fresh in CAS.  You don't have to spend much time on them; the point is to test completely fresh content.

If your Gallery sims are fine in the clean folder, you can start moving over your mods and custom content and testing again.  The 50/50 method is the most efficient approach.

https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Finding_Problem_Custom_Content#The_50.25_Method

Here though, instead of just seeing whether the game loads or crashes, please check the save file size.  A new save should be around 5 MB in size and grow only very slowly; even after a very long initial play session, I'd expect it to be no more than 8 MB.  Any time the save grows much faster, you'll know that one of the files you added back is a problem, and you can split that last batch and retest until you find the culprit.

I would love to know which mod or cc item is causing this, or items plural if you find more than one.  At least several other users have reported the same issue, with potentially dozens more affected (not enough info to say), and as far as I can tell, all of them used mods and/or cc at one point.  So it would be great to know what exactly is triggering this issue.