Re: Lagging Issues and endless loading screens again!

Hi so I tried the first thing, load times weren’t much better at all. Maybe a little fast but was still freezing in the middle of the load screen at times. The music would stop and the whole thing would freeze. Game is also freezing severely and lagging. From Home Screen I pretended to go make a new game and it just froze every second. 

I attempted in offline mode and it launched faster but still lags quite a bit. how can I use the gallery if I have to play in offline mode?  :/ I will eventually send over the dxdiag 

ok here is my dxdiag

@smilelikemiles  Your dxdiag is full of Windows-related errors, including some update errors, so it's best to clean those up first.  Start with a couple of basic checks of your Windows system files:

• Hit Windows key-X
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Windows Terminal (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
• Inside the window that appears, copy and paste “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes into the window, and enter
• The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here
• After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key-X again
• Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Windows Terminal (Administrator)”
• Inside the window, copy and paste “sfc /scannow” without quotes into the window, and enter
• Post the message you receive here

Restart your computer, hit Windows key-i, select Update & Security, and click the box to check for updates.  If any install, restart again afterwards.

Next, update the driver for your Nvidia graphics card.  Your current driver is from 2019 and could be causing the in-game lag.  You can get the newest driver from Nvidia here:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/190553/en-us/

Run the installer as an admin: right-click on the download and select "Run as administrator."  Select the Custom route (as opposed to Express) and check the box to perform a clean install.  Unless you have a specific reason to use it, please also uncheck the box for GeForce Experience.  You can download new drivers manually, and GFE's other features can get in the way, so it's not worth installing unless you need one of those features.  Restart your computer again afterwards.

Before trying to play, please also disable Game Mode and Game Bar, both of which are under Windows Settings > Gaming.

I’m unsure why but every update my computer does is said to be full of errors. I had to fix a mega computer issue after an update failed. I am truly beginning to despise windows but my sisters brand new Mac not running sims properly never makes me want to get one of those either. 

my computer updated last night so I’m not sure if there will be any new updates but I don’t know if I’ll have a lot of time to fix this. I will try my best this seems like it’s going to take a long time to fix. 

thank you I will do my best 

Message I recieved: Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

when I restarted after the first process it updated as well. I know i must restart again.

So my game still has some slight lagging from time to time but it’s playable and not that severe lag I had. Makes me excited since a new pack is being announced tomorrow. Thank you so much for helping! 

The game mode thing was already turned off as was the other one in settings. Windows updates I am up to date on besides optional updates (Windows 11- I’m just holding off on updating to windows 11 for now!) and graphics card was also updated 👍 

@smilelikemiles  That's great to hear, and a pretty good outcome overall for Sims 4.  It's going to lag from time to time no matter what you do; that's just how the game works these days.  But if you run into any more trouble, post back (with a new dxdiag, please) and let me know.

Thanks so much I truly appreciate it! I’m saving this thread as not to forget where to come back if needed! 

Hi so my game is back to this all over again ☹️ I don’t really know what’s going on with it 

@smilelikemiles  Please post a new dxdiag.  Please also let me know whether the lag shows up in a new save in a clean user folder, as before.  I'm curious whether the lag is due to the particulars of your current save or something more global.

Ok I’ll send tomorrow I’m already off to sleep. It appears the start up just felt like so long but thankfully the game was not lagging. Just the load screens and start up time was endless again. The game took forever to open as well. 

I am growing tired of this issue. I apologize for not getting on sooner. I did everything you did above and I am still having a loading issue. Game lag is overall at the norm and the game is playable once I am in but by the time my game loads 30 minutes later I no longer have interest in playing. 

here is my dxdiag:

This is all I stare at with music for 30 minutes. Tonight I haven’t been able to get in at all yet. 

also when I finally got in I had to escape the game and when I went back the screen was white, my game didn’t come back up and I lost all my progress for the day. Really a bummer. Think I’m done with this game as it’s just truly an unplayable mess. All this money spent on nothing! Cancelling my preorder for the new pack too. It’s just so unbearable. I don’t have time to uninstall it again for it to not work anyways so I’m not gonna even bother with that. This laptop cost me all my savings for the game to just not run anymore. Can’t afford another computer so I guess I can’t do anything with it 

@smilelikemiles  The first thing I noticed is the Nvidia driver is not WHQL. This means it has not been approved by the Microsoft gods. There was a recent Windows update. Once you have a WHQL video driver make sure the game sees the GPU correctly (found 1 - matched 1). The page file (virtual memory) seems to be too small (maybe). This may account for the long loading time as the operating system is waiting for room.  Are you running other programs in the background when playing the game?

Hi I’m not running anything else and I’ve opened task manager to make sure of that. I’m not sure what that means? I was just told to update my graphics driver which I’ve done but what is WHQL? And how do I do that (not computer smart here)? After I updated that my computer had f updated again. I have a laptop and it was off so it didn’t install any new windows updates. My game used to run perfectly fine and this is all so sudden that it’s been like this. I lost my whole gameplay from tonight bc my game also wasn’t responding while saving and it froze. 

this is just so frustrating. Every fix I do seems temporary and my game goes back to this state every time. My windows updates seem to always have “errors” in them and there’s so many of them I don’t understand why. I just want to enjoy my game but I haven’t felt any of the joy I usually feel. Every time I try and play there’s something. I work so much (just has a full time 7 day week) so this used to be my calming down for the day and now it just leaves me frustrated. I don’t have the same time I used to and every step I completed so far took so much time and it didn’t fix it. 

@smilelikemiles  Just checking, but you don't happen to have Sims 4 installed on an external drive, do you?  There's no external drive listed in your dxdiag, but you could have unplugged it, and an issue with the external or its connection could explain the issue.

Otherwise, 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

When you reboot, go through the Task Manager's background tasks list shutting down everything that doesn't absolutely need to be running, so basically anything that isn't from Microsoft, Intel, or Nvidia.  If you accidentally kill the wrong process and it doesn't restart on its own, just reboot your computer.  And if you shut something down that isn't critical and it does restart, please make a note of it.  As an example, this has been an issue with Razer software recently, and while this may or may not be contributing to your issue, it's useful to know that you may need to account for this.

While testing in the clean boot, please also disable your antivirus, if you have one.  And use a(nother) clean Sims 4 folder as well.

Finally, while the game is loading, please open the Task Manager and look at CPU use and temperature in the Performance category.  Let me know what you see for both.  If Sims 4 isn't already set to launch in windowed mode, you can force it to do so (so you can easily switch to the Task Manager): open your Origin game library, right-click on the Sims 4 icon, select Game Properties > Advanced Launch Options, enter -w in the command line box, and save.

When testing, you can shut down Sims 4 in the Task Manager any time it's been loading without making any progress for more than about five minutes.  Since you'll be using a clean folder with no mods or custom content, it really should only take a minute or two to load, so after five minutes, you'll know that the issue hasn't been fixed.

@roberta591  I'm not sure what you're looking at in the dxdiag.  The page file is large enough—less than half of it is in use—and is probably dynamic.  And the Nvidia driver is definitely WHQL, as you can see by comparing the version with the one listed on the Nvidia driver download page:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/190553/en-us/

This is really overwhelming to me as I’m not computer smart so I’m not sure of how to do any of this safely. All this for a game seems like so much and very discouraging for me and just makes me more uninterested to play ☹️ I’ve done so much for this game and it breaks every single time. I’m exhausted and don’t have the energy for any of this as it just stresses me more. 

I only saved a backup to an external drive but I don’t have the game “installed” on the external drive. This is the only option I have to backup my files in the event my computer was to crash for any reason. I would do a clean install of the game if that were to happen and just put my saved game files and such back. I only used it weeks ago to have a newer backup but I removed the device safely (ejected safely before removing) but I haven’t had to use that backup yet. I don’t play with the external drive plugged in. I just use it to save my data and I safely eject it and store it away until I do another backup of important things. 

also back to disabling my antivirus…. Doesn’t that make my computer prone to viruses? I disabled in the past and wound up getting a virus in my old computer and had to start over with everything. and do I have to turn it on and off after every game? That seems tedious and annoying to remember. I just want to be able to play and just shut down when  I’m finished. I thought maybe my antivirus was the issue but again idk how to do that safely without exposing my computer to potential threats since I play for hours at a time. 

@smilelikemiles  You don't need to worry about your graphics driver or the computer's page file usage.  Neither of these looks like a current issue.

For the antivirus, the point is to test playing with it disabled, not to get rid of it.  As long as you only open Origin and Sims 4 while it's disabled, your computer should be safe.  (And you can quit the game and reenable the antivirus as soon as you see the results.)  If you see signs of a virus with the antivirus disabled, the virus was already there—neither Origin nor Sims 4 is going to allow malware to download.  If this doesn't help, we move on to other possible causes.  If this does help, the question then becomes which settings you need to change to keep it from interfering with Sims 4.

The clean boot may look intimidating, but all it really involves is clicking a few boxes, then restarting your computer.  Going through the Task Manager's background processes list should only take a minute or two.  It only takes a few seconds to set Origin to launch Sims 4 in windowed mode, and another few seconds to check the Task Manager while the game is loading.

I understand this process can feel quite involved, but the thing is, you've already tried the simple fixes and they haven't helped long-term.  The goal here is still to identify a problem that can be addressed once and then never again, or at least not again for a long time.  It's the process of finding that problem that can take some work.

@puzzlezaddict 

your right about the page file maybe. If the computer is taking a long time to load then the computer is real busy doing something else or going through a very long error routine. I say this because the user indicating the game does start after a long time - 30 minutes. The user has 12,600mb page file and mine has 18,..600mb page file on a 1tb drive. The computer is not crashing. It's like something is choking the system and increasing the page file would not hurt anything to try it.

Driver Date/Size: 6/22/2022 8:00:00 PM, 1130000 bytes

         WHQL Logo'd: n/a

     WHQL Date Stamp: n/a

Don't look WHQL to me.

My computer is running smoothly and doesn’t take a year to start lol just my sims game load time is taking a long time and now the game is fine until it lags and freezes up (game froze during saving and I had to force quit and lose everything). I have nothing running when I play sims besides origin obviously. I never had this issue before and my graphics card was just updated recently so it should be able to handle the game. That was part of why I was having a separate issue with the game but that’s now resolved. 

Idk how to disable it as I haven’t done it in a while. It’s also intimidating bc I don’t even know what some of the stuff on task manager is so how do I know what to check and what to leave unchecked? I’m not computer smart so it looks confusing to me. 

@smilelikemiles  Look, just do what you feel comfortable doing, list the steps you've taken, and we'll go from there.  For example, a clean boot isn't completely thorough if you don't also go through the Task Manager and shut down any extraneous apps, but it's still better than nothing.

If you want, you can also post screenshots and ask what you should or shouldn't disable.

But please at least try the instructions I posted.  There's clearly something going on with your computer that's interfering with Sims 4, and the only way to find it is to test.  If I could offer you a magic bullet to fix this, I would have already.

I’m sorry if I’ve been so cranky over this it’s just so frustrating. I have no issues with anything else on my computer and other games. This game is just poorly designed IMO. And it’s laggy and glitchy. It’s just frustrating bc I find it could be better. I will try I’m just running on little time. I work 7 days a week so I don’t have a whole lot of time to dedicate to this. I miss being able to just go on and play. This was so sudden so it’s irritating. 

I’ll do my best and report back with screenshots when I have a moment but for right now I am busy so idk when I’ll get back on my laptop to play. I appreciate the help so I’m very sorry if I seem ungrateful it’s just annoying. I bought this laptop and spent more then I can being I’m low income after all my bills and I feel like I have so many problems with this game. I wish I could have a better PC for it but this is all I can have living in a small space. If you’re around tonight I might try and do some of this later but no guarantees. 

I have a question. 

when I started with a fresh folder I replaced the whole sims 4 folder with the backup I had on my desktop (not my external drive copy as that’s not my most recent backup anyway) does that make a difference? It just occurred to me that the last time I had the game make a new a folder that’s what I remember doing. Should I also test this with only moving over my games + other specific files (and eventually the mods and cc I have after I test in vanilla) 

should there only be specific files I should be putting into the fresh folder? If so what files besides my saved games folder do I transfer over? 

@smilelikemiles  The whole point of a clean folder is to not add anything to it.  Don't transfer over your saves, don't transfer your mods and custom content, don't even transfer a single file.