Sims 4 Freezing Computer

Seems like this might be your issue https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/CURRENT-ISSUE-Game-Freeze-Extended-Loading-Times-Save-Game/td-p/9721871

Try locating a backup save file before Winterfest and remove Father Winter from the tradition.

This does not really seem to be my exact issue but I will see if removing Father Winter from Winterfest will help. 

However the thread mentions the in-game clock being frozen but the game still running.

That is not the issue I am having. My issue is my entire computer freezes, I can't even use ctrl, alt, and delete to go back to bring up task manager. 

It never unfreezes either, once it's frozen its totally frozen and I have to hard reset my computer to resume using it. 

@rokelle2012  Many people see the game clock freeze, but not all.  The freeze is more a symptom, basically the game engine or maybe the CPU not being able to keep up with the demans being placed on it.  Your other symptoms do sound somewhat like the problem in the linked bug report, although it's not conclusive.

The telltale sign of the Father Winter issue is that your save file bloats, anywhere from double to 20 times the size of the earlier versions.  Saves are in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves, and the previous versions of a save have a .verx extension on the end.  If you sort by date, it should be obvious whether your saves have bloated recently.

If this is your issue, you can try the steps described here:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2020/11/game-time-is-freezing-patch-1-68/

This does not appear to be my issue as my save files are all still around 5000 KB, no bloating appears to be present. I could reinstall MCC again and try to have it clear out my homeless population I suppose.

Is there anything else that I should list here? Computer specs, dxdiag file, save file, etc.?

@rokelle2012  A dxdiag would be great:

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

As an experiment, please also try playing a new save in a clean user folder, for comparison.  Move your 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; just see how a new save runs.

When you're done experimenting, you can trash the new folder and put your old one back, and the game will read your existing saves and other content again.

Alright, so after playing in a new user folder as suggested I have found out something interesting. My game does not freeze my computer if the game is in CAS, only outside of CAS. I had the new save up for several hours in CAS with no freezing whatsoever and it had frozen within minutes me moving the test sim into a lot. 

Included is my dxdiag file. Not really sure what is going on with my game but I would very much like to be able to actually play rather than just being stuck in CAS the whole time.

@rokelle2012  As an(other) experiment, try playing while your computer is completely offline.  You can sign into Origin and put it in offline mode, then disable wifi and/or unplug the ethernet cable before launching the game.

If that doesn't make a difference, please run a couple of basic checks of your Windows system files.  Here's how:

• Hit Windows key-X
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (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 “Command prompt (Administrator)”
• Inside the window, copy and paste “sfc /scannow” without quotes into the window, and enter
• Post the message you receive here

Restart before trying to play.

If that doesn't help, try doing a clean uninstall and reinstall of the Nvidia graphics driver.  You don't have to disable the driver; the point is to have a completely fresh copy.  Download Display Driver Uninstaller from here:

https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3300

You can get a new driver here:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/166630/en-us

Next, take your computer completely offline—disable wifi and/or pull the ethernet cord—and double-click the DDU.exe.  Take note of where the file will land, and click Extract.  If it's easier, you can copy the path and then paste it into the address bar in a File Explorer window.  Open the folder and then launch Display Driver Uninstaller.exe, and you'll get a message that you're not in Safe Mode.  Click OK, then go to Options and enable Safe Mode dialog.  Here's a screenshot of what your options should look like; make sure the box in red is checked:

Close options, and the DDU, and then open the DDU.exe again.  For launch options, choose "Safe Mode (Recommended)," and then click Reboot to Safe Mode (you'll need your password, so find it before rebooting).  Once you login, you'll see this:

In the blue box, choose GPU, then Nvidia if it's not already showing.  Then click Clean and Restart (red box).

Once your computer has rebooted, now back in normal mode, run the driver install .exe in custom mode.  Select "perform a clean installation" and install ONLY the GPU driver and the PHYSX software.

Reboot again, go back online, and see whether the game works normally.  If not, let me know.

Alright, I did the first two system checks and these are my results:

For the first one it did encounter an error that stated, "The WOF driver encountered a corruption in the compressed file's Resource Table". The check reached about 50-55% before giving me this error.

For the second check, the message I got was, "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations". 

I am about the go ahead and restart my computer and then go ahead with the uninstallation and reinstallation of the Nvidia drivers, unless you believe there is something else I should do based on the error above.

*edit: I went ahead and included a copy of the log file from the first error. Don't know if it is needed but thought it might be important.

@rokelle2012  Interesting errors.  You can try the clean uninstall and reinstall of the Nvidia driver if you want; there's a reasonable chance that the DISM error is irrelevant to the driver or to Sims 4.  If the issue is just with the component store and Windows 10 itself doesn't need repairing, then the problem isn't critical, and it should be resolved with the next Windows feature update.  But you don't know that nothing about Windows needs repairing until your game works again, along with everything else of course.

If you need or want to address the DISM error itself, the best approach is to do a repair install or a feature update of Windows 10.  The question then becomes whether you want to stay on your current Windows build or would be fine updating to the newest one.

If you don't mind updating, open this site in Edge (yes, Edge):

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

and click the button at the top of the screen to force an update.

Doing a repair install is also a viable option, but doing one with your current build of Windows rather than the newest one would require tracking down an ISO of that build.  Let me know if you want to go this route, and I'll see if I can find a legitimate one.

Wanted to give a quick update as I know I haven't responded in a bit. I went ahead and decided to try uninstalling my current graphics drivers and doing a fresh install.

It was mentioned I needed my password, no big deal, I have that memorized. Well, it was actually a huge deal because what I didn't realize was my Microsoft account password would not work as there was no internet connection. 

Safe to say I very much bricked my computer as I did not have an actual password for the computer itself, I always signed in via pincode or my Microsoft account. 

So now we are installing windows updates again after I finally managed to completely wipe my hdsd and re-install windows again.

Upon reinstall of the network drivers, the computer went online and found the rest of the needed drivers including the Nvidia driver. GeForce experience is not currently installed, just the driver. 

I shall try my game again once my computer is fully updated and I have put all of my backed up files back onto the computer from One Drive.