Forum Discussion

flownty's avatar
2 years ago

Infinite loading screen

Hello!

Like many others, I am experiencing a perpetual loading screen. I can get past the main menu and hit resume, but that's about it. I have every expansion and game pack, except for Journey to Batuu and For Rent, along with most of the stuff packs.

The music plays, the plumbob spins, and the tips roll, but nothing happens. I've troubleshoot every way I knew and every way this forum and multiple others have told me to. I've gone offline, deleted mods, updated mods, repaired, cleared caches, and even deleted the files and put them back, as described by another thread posted 3 weeks ago by SnarkyWitch. Nothing. A fresh, vanilla save file doesn't even load.

The game is fully updated. I have been sitting at the screen for about an hour, hoping it will load eventually. The only thing that can exit the game is the task manager.

Thank you!

4 Replies

  • @flownty  Thanks for the dxdiag, which shows, among other things, that your C drive is critically low on free space.  7 GB free is barely enough for Windows to maneuver properly, and this alone could be the source of the problem.  So please try to clear another 15-20 GB, to eliminate this as a potential problem if nothing else.

    Once you've done that, restart your computer and try again to play.  If the game won't load, and you don't need to wait more than about a minute if you're testing with a new save (go ahead and kill it in the Task Manager), please update your graphics driver.  The one you currently have installed is relatively new, but the Sims 4 errors in your dxdiag could be related to the driver.  Here's the newest one from Nvidia:

    https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/226798/en-us/

    Run the installer as an admin: right-click the download and select "Run as administrator."  Choose the Custom (not Express) install method, and check the box to perform a clean install.  Restart afterwards and before trying to play.

  • flownty's avatar
    flownty
    2 years ago

    @puzzlezaddictThank you for replying! Now, this is embarrassing to ask, but how can I free up space without deleting anything? I don't even feel like I have anything on this PC. The only (big) games are Sims 4, Baldur's Gate 3, and House Flipper. There are no documents, either.

    I'm able to get into another household without the load screen "freezing" but I worry that this will only happen again. I haven't tried to get into the corrupted household, I'm too scared to lol. 

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @flownty  The short answer is, you can't free up space without deleting data.  What you can do is go through the Downloads folder looking for old files to delete, for example installers for programs you've already installed or .zip files of content you've already extracted.

    If that's not enough, the next step would be to uninstall a game currently on C and reinstall it on D.  Sims 4 would load more slowly on D, since it's a mechanical drive, but the difference wouldn't be unmanageable.  And the game alone is large enough that this would take care of the free storage problem all by itself, at least as things stand now.