@Gemmawho Does the game always freeze right when you try to place a household? Does it freeze if you try to play in a different world? Please also let me know whether you use OneDrive, and if so, whether it's currently syncing the contents of Documents.
@puzzlezaddict I can place a household but then about a minute into playing the household the game completely freezes up. Usually whilst I'm in build mode but it has also done it just when I was moving the camera around the lot. Just tried creating a different family and playing in another world and the exact same thing happened. I use OneDrive, but it says it's up to date and not syncing anything at the moment.
Edited to add: I just tried starting origin in offline mode and disconnecting from the internet before starting up the game and it still froze about 30s into playing a household.
@Gemmawho Please start by running a couple of basic checks on your Windows system files:
Restart your computer and check for Windows updates again, and if any install, restart your computer afterwards.
Next, please try playing a new save 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. Don't add anything to it yet; just start another new save in one of the base game worlds and see whether it freezes. You don't have to spend much time on it; when I'm testing like this, I just create a single sim and hit Randomize a few times.
If you get another crash, please try playing in a clean boot:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10
When you reboot, go through the Task Manager's background processes list shutting down anything that doesn't absolutely need to be running. Some programs don't get disabled in a clean boot, and in your particular case, please be sure to kill any Asus support software you find. Anything critical should restart itself, but if not, another reboot will restore it.
Any time you get a freeze, please check the Reliability Monitor for any related errors. Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes, and you'll see a list of errors and updates with a column for each day. (Today is all the way on the right.)
For any error that happened at the exact time of a game crash (within a couple minutes), please click "View technical details," or right-click on the entry, copy the information, and paste it here. You can ignore any "Windows was not shut down properly" errors, but I'm interested in anything else. The RM may not update right away, so check back in an hour or so, and check the timestamp within the technical details—the one on the chart isn't always accurate.
@puzzlezaddict I've done everything you mentioned and the game is still freezing, although it seems to only happen when I'm in build mode and after playing in clean boot I could play for a little longer before it froze.
After performing the scan in PowerShell I received the following messgae:
Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.
PS C:\Windows\system32>
The reliability monitor threw up several of the same errors today which all appear to coincide with the game freezing. All of them are titled 'Control the DTS audio processing object.' And the technical details are as follows:
Description
Faulting Application Path: C:\Windows\System32\DTS\PC\APO4x\DtsApo4Service.exe
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: DtsApo4Service.exe
Application Version: 1.6.4.0
Application Timestamp: 5f7eb00c
Fault Module Name: DtsApo4Service.exe
Fault Module Version: 1.6.4.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 5f7eb00c
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000000000000bed0
OS Version: 10.0.19043.2.0.0.768.101
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: 209e
Additional Information 2: 209e52c84b626aa5fddbb6802055c64c
Additional Information 3: 173f
Additional Information 4: 173f35c54c61c6fa2530335c54d17b42
Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 7ac899b1bf56fb26cde169eca868e76a (2153118562018453354)
@Gemmawho Try killing any processes in the Task Manager called DTS [something] or Sonic Studio. You might not have sound, but the question is whether Sims 4 works. If you get another freeze, please try using the laptop's built-in speakers rather than any other device.
@puzzlezaddict Thank you. I started up the game and then switched to task manager and waited to see if any processes along those lines appeared. Control the DTS audio processing came up after a minute so I killed it and the game seemed to work absolutely fine after that so I'm assuming that must have been the problem. The sound still worked fine so should I just uninstall this DTS programme or will I need to go in and kill the process every time I play?
@Gemmawho That's great to hear, and if you want to uninstall the program, go ahead. It may get reinstalled with other system updates though, since it's software Asus has deemed critical for your laptop.
If you'd prefer, you can disable it instead. Hit Windows key-R, enter "msconfig" without quotes, select "Services," look for anything with DTS or Sonic Studio in the name, and uncheck the box next to whatever you find. This should prevent the services from starting at all, but double-check in the Task Manager anyway. This has the advantage that you can reenable the service(s) the same way if you happen to run an app that would need them.
@puzzlezaddict So it turns out that wasn't the issue after all and I just didn't play for long enough last week for the game to crash... I've tried playing a couple of times this weekend and both times I can play for about 10 minutes before the game freezes. Usually the fans get louder on the laptop and then it freezes and they get quiet again. I've checked the reliability monitor and there are no critical events around the time of any of the game crashes except for the usual 'windows was not properly shut down'. Any other suggestions? Can't believe I've spent so much money on a gaming laptop that can't seem to cope with playing the sims.
@Gemmawho I'd like to see on a hardware level what happens as the fans get louder and the game freezes. Download hwinfo from here:
https://www.hwinfo.com/download/
You don't need to install anything if you don't want to; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you want. (If you would like to install, be sure to click the button for hwinfo itself, not for lansweeper.) Restart your computer, and don't open any other apps. Launch hwinfo, choose "sensors only," and click the icon that's a sheet of paper with a + sign to start logging. Save the file to your desktop for easy access later.
Wait five minutes, then launch Sims 4 and play until it freezes. The log should still be intact up until you restart your computer, but please let me know how long you played before the freeze. You can upload the log to a third-party free filehosting site and link it here. Please leave it in .csv format, or if you use OneDrive to share, please compress it in .zip format instead.
@puzzlezaddict All done. This time it froze after only 2 minutes of gameplay. Here's the link to the hwinfo log:
https://mega.nz/file/AgYCGBTK#rZjwTLW1g_OF-RtUsowaCvfwct-jRchXzR🤭lBCEVYc
@Gemmawho Several of the readings in your hwinfo log looked concerning to me, both in that they could explain the game crashes and that the hardware shouldn't be behaving that way. (The short version is that the processor isn't running at its expected speed and is thermal throttling before it's necessary, and that some other values are wildly off where tehy should be.) So I asked for a second opinion, and that opinion is that you should run a couple of benchmark tests and see how the laptop does.
Steam offers a 3DMark demo that includes Time Spy and Firestrike. Please download the free version (no need to pay) and run each benchmark. Let me know whether the laptop crashes, and if not, please link me the results from each test. You don't need to run hwinfo at the same time, and in fact it's best to not run any other apps when benchmarking.
@puzzlezaddict so I ran both tests. Time Spy ran fine and this is the link to the results
http://www.3dmark.com/spy/22322674. Then Firestrike seemed to be running fine but then suddenly crashed during the combined test and I had to hard reset the laptop.
@Gemmawho That's certainly interesting. Please run Time Spy and Firestrike again, this time with hwinfo logging in the background. After Time Spy is done, wait a couple minutes before starting Firestrike.
Please also use a timer and write down the timestamps for when you launch each benchmark and when each section of the benchmark starts. You don't have to be perfectly accurate; anything within a few seconds is fine.
@puzzlezaddict so the Time Spy test crashed about 20s into it this time. First time I forgot to start logging on hwinfo, but the speakers started making a loud noise (not sure I tested with the sound on last night) and then I got a BSOD with the stop code Machine_check_exception. I then had to hard reset it as it got stuck on the BSOD. Restarted the laptop and ran Time Spy again with hwinfo logging this time. Launched the test at 2:13s and it crashed at 2:33s. No BSOD this time but the speakers made the same loud noise and I had to hard reset the laptop again. Fire Strike seemed to run exactly the same as last night. Launched at 2:41s, graphics test 1 started at 5:46s, graphics test 2 started at 6:31s, physics test started at 7:19s and the combined test started at 7:57. It crashed during the combined test at 8:18s and I got another BSOD with the stop code clock_watchdog_timeout. Had to hard reset the laptop again with the BSOD up as it got stuck at 21%.
Here are the links to the hwinfo logs for both tests:
https://mega.nz/file/554QxTab#aQo4TmeZc32fZhesvfbb39Z_SrX5dJcgpMXpvTJgHxU
https://mega.nz/file/0hYBzA4T#hfvx3I7h0ee8wrwyhRktOdN3Mb7wm1P8jMgd6cFT4BI
Feels like I've somehow ended up with a dud laptop!
@Gemmawho Honestly, you might in fact have received a defective laptop. If you'd like, you can try reinstalling Windows, as in, a clean wipe and a fresh install. That might well fix the issues. But it might not, and you may need to RMA the laptop entirely.
@puzzlezaddict Thank you. I'll try that and then if I'm still having problems I'll contact ASUS to get it sorted. Thank you for all your help and advice!
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