Game freezing since latest update
Hi all, Simply as it says. The game is constantly freezing since the latest update. I've updated my graphics drivers and repaired the game through the EA app but no success. No mods installed. Hard...
Forum Discussion
Hi there,
Firstly- thanks for your help!
I freed up 43gb on my C drive (thank you for that- totally forgot to clean it out), ran the DISM.exe and sfc /scannow and restarted the PC. The DISM didn't find any errors but scannow did. The only step I haven't carried out is a clean reinstallation of my graphics driver. I'd want to back the entire PC up before I did that, I spent weeks troubleshooting the DXDIAG error Baldur's Gate 3 was throwing up every time I launched it, and I don't want to fix one game only to break another if it's not the graphics driver causing the problem.
Still freezing in ultra graphics mode, it usually starts in build/buy and then continues in live mode. Taking it down to high graphics = no freezing. I put my GPU through a stress test (from the PC manufacturer) and it didn't return any errors, so can I just clarify: does the DXDIAG show that my graphics driver is crashing, or are you saying that this NVidia driver crashes a lot? I only ask because the freezing isn't happening on any other games, including BG3 and WoW raiding in ultra high graphics which is significantly more work for the PC than TS4.
I'll attach a fresh DXDIAG, if you reckon it's the graphics driver, I'll backup the PC when I have time (what's free time?) and follow Crinrict's guide.
Thanks so much once again- I appreciate your help enormously!
@ThisMicrophone Your old and new dxdiags both show that the graphics driver is crashing. I'm talking about these errors, at the end of the dxdiags:
Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0
Problem signature:
P1: 141
P2: ffffc505b29ef210
P3: fffff8061efb9050
P4: 0
P5: 41e4
P6: 10_0_19045
P7: 0_0
P8: 768_1
P9:
P10:
More precisely, LiveKernelEvent 141 means that the video driver failed to respond in what Windows deems is an appropriate interval (2 seconds by default), so Windows resets the driver. The process is a bit more complicated, of course, but the point here is that the driver isn't bahaving appropriately when running some task.
If that task is a game known to work properly on the vast majority of systems and with the currently-installed driver version, then the problem is almost always on the user's system. That, in turn, doesn't necessarily mean that the graphics driver itself is the problem. But you've stress-tested the graphics card and verified the integrity of Windows, so the driver is the only good suepect left.
As for why this only happens in Sims 4, I couldn't tell you for sure, but I will point out that it's an older game that may use different runtimes and other resources than all the other games you play. So if the problem is with part of the driver that deals with DirectX 9 functions, and all your other games use DX11 or 12, you'd only see the problem in Sims 4.
Clean-uninstalling and reinstalling a driver is a very safe process and doesn't require any extra backup procedure. You'd of course want to have your essential files backed up anyway; I'm just saying that this isn't a special circumstance. DDU is widely used and extensively tested and is actually more reliable than the built-in Nvidia and AMD processes for cleanly removing a driver. You could of course uninstall the driver through Device Manager and reinstall the latest version, but if that doesn't help, and it might not, you'd end up needing DDU anyway.
Hey there,
Firstly- thanks again for your help!
I followed Crinrict's guide to the letter and did a clean reinstall of the graphics driver, another sfc /scannow for good measure (nothing), and started playing. Unfortunately the freezing came back and now it is in both modes, live and build/buy. I can only assume that the issue is with the latest update of TS4, given the freezing started then and continues on every household and lot, the GPU's stress test came back normal, the clean reinstallation of the graphics driver hasn't fixed it, and the PC is running every other game and piece of software normally on ultra-high graphics.
A quick theory: the driver reset issue shown in the DxDiag is what was causing Baldur's Gate 3 to crash after its first hotfix. To work around having to edit the registry and potentially make the system unstable, I turned anti-aliasing off and NVidia DLSS on in BG3 and this fixed the problem. I'll explore in TS4's settings as well, but I suspect this problem comes from EA.
Thanks enormously again for your help! Regardless of the TS4 issue, you've given me tons of useful PC knowledge.
@ThisMicrophone It's certainly worth reseting the Nvidia Control Panel's options, either globally for for Sims 4, if you've changed anything there. And if you've overclocked any component of your computer, please rest that to default as well, at least for now. Other than that, Sims 4 really shouldn't be freezing, and it doesn't on most systems.
Are you getting new errors related to the freezes? You can check in the Reliability Monitor. Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes, and you'll see a chart of errors and updates with a column for each day. Today is on the right.
Look for any errors that happened at exactly the time of a freeze, specifically after you reinstalled the graphics driver. If you find one, double-click it to see more details, then copy that info and paste it into a reply here. If you don't see a new error, check back in an hour or so—the Reliability Monitor doesn't always update right away. And if you don't see any errors with the correct timestamp, please check the technical details of the ones you do find. I've noticed that some errors show the wrong time in the overview but the correct one in their details.
