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iLillyi's avatar
11 months ago

Loading into save takes too long

Hello, so I've been having issues lately with my game (both vanilla and modded) where it takes 3-10 minutes to load. It's completely random if it wants to take 2 minutes or 10 minutes. I haven't been able to find a cause, my PC meets the recommended specs, and I've had this issue on both my laptop and my desktop, both meant for gaming. I've done the following: fresh EA folder, deleted cache, deleted mods, made new saves. Here's a dxdiag file as I know it's often requested. This long loading has started after the for rent pack was released. 

6 Replies

  • @iLillyi  Does this happen if you play while your computer is offline?  I realize this wouldn't be a convenient long-term fix, but it's a helpful diagnostic step.

    Please also let me know whether your Sims 4 user folder is in OneDrive.  You can right-click the folder and select Properties > General, then look for the location.

  • iLillyi's avatar
    iLillyi
    11 months ago

    One drive is currently uninstalled, when I installed windows I bypassed the one drive set up. But I did check the folder, it’s not linked to one drive.

    Tried the offline just now unfortunately it didn’t change the time of my save loading, it was still loading at 2 minutes. If anything it made the initial launch take longer.

    i did notice that it’s using 60% of my ram but barely using my CPU. My CPU reached MAYBE 30% usage when loading. The only thing my laptop and desktop have in common is they’re both 16gb ram. 

    And also the game around 10-15 seconds will act like its about the load in, ever since launch I’ve noticed that the plumbob loading screen will lag and then speed up a second before loading into the game, but lately it’s been doing that and then continuing to load for another few minutes, the highest I ever recorded it being 10 minutes.

  • @iLillyi  What antivirus do you use, and does it help to (temporarily) disable the software?  A few different programs have been blocking or otherwise interfering with Sims 4 lately.

    If that doesn't help, please try playing in a clean boot:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

    The one service to leave enabled is the EABackgroundService, which the EA App needs in order to run.  Disable the rest as described.

    When you reboot your computer, go through the Task Manager's background processes list shutting down any service that doesn't absolutely need to be running, for example anything from MSI Afterburner to RGB software might still be enabled.  If you accidentally kill a critical process and it doesn't restart on its own, just reboot your computer again.

    Don't open anything other than Sims 4 and the EA App while testing, not even a browser window.  Please do test at least once with your computer offline, and test a new save with no mods or custom content at first.

  • iLillyi's avatar
    iLillyi
    11 months ago

    This is a fresh install of windows, with the only non essential programs being steam, EA App, Winrar, and google chrome. I haven’t installed an antivirus yet since I haven’t been using to internet. I’ve been trying to solve this loading issue the entire time. I can still do the clean boot if that’s still relevant. 

    Ea App Offline PC Online: 2:17 with mods

    Ea App offline PC online 9seconds without mods. So it does seem to be mod related, and probably why it happened without mods on my laptop was because the CPU wasn’t strong enough for all packs. 

    So now my issue is, my mods folder is only 10gigs. What upgrade would I need to get my loading speeds better to play with this mods folder? I understand 10 seconds is a bit unreasonable for 10gbs of mods but I’d settle for 30-45 seconds.

    I currently have 16gb ram and a Ryzen 5 5600x. 

  • @iLillyi  The Ryzen 5 5600X is likely not the limiting factor here, but rather the game itself.  RAM is definitely not an issue, although if you upgraded the CPU to something that supported the much faster DDR5 (the 5600X is DDR4-only), that could improve things around the margins.  Still, I wouldn't suggest an upgrade just for this considering that improvements would be small—Sims 4 can't properly take advantage of more powerful hardware than you currently have.

    What I'd suggest instead is suppressing the pop-up list of mods and custom content at the Main Menu.  Generating this list takes a long time, and I'm guessing you don't constantly need to be told which mods you have installed.  If that doesn't help, make sure you don't have any broken mods, or anything made for Sims 2 or 3, both of which can increase loading times significantly if they don't crash the game outright.  Other than that, it's worth doing a 50/50 of your mods to see if you can identify any particular offender.

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

  • iLillyi's avatar
    iLillyi
    11 months ago

    I actually found my fix, though I’m not sure which one did it but I’m sure they all contributed.

    1. I used bulk rename to take out all special characters and spaces in my mods folder.

    2. I deleted all high poly cc

    3. I cleaned out my cache before EVERY initial load. 

    4. I waited on the main menu for at LEAST 30 seconds, opening the packs and the kits tabs.

    5. I loaded into the game BEFORE opening any other programs.

    With only CC and MCCC, my game loaded in 4 seconds. 

    With my entire 10gb mods folder, it took the exact same time, 4 seconds. 

    The pie menu is also almost instant, before it would take around 2-3 seconds to pop up.

    I’m not sure if this will help anyone else, but those 5 fixes combined fixed it for me.

    I believe the biggest contributor is letting the game stay on the main menu for a bit before just jumping in. 

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