I'm really hoping I can get some sort of help here because my game is completely unplayable because of this and has been for quite some time. During unspecified amounts of play time Sims 4 will alwa...
@rokelle2012 Sorry for the late reply; I wanted to get a second opinion on whether there was anything else you could do here. This issue isn't about Sims 4 or any other games. Your hard drive is failing. The new chkdsk scan flagged far more bad sectors as the first one, and it still reports that there's not enough space to replace them. Either of these is enough to say the drive is in bad shape; both means it's time for a replacement, the sooner the better. While your drive might continue to function for a while, it could also fail at any moment, at which point your data could be totally unrecoverable.
If you have a warranty, this is the time to use it. I'm not sure why this drive failed so quickly, but that should never happen and just reinforces the idea that there's something very wrong with the drive.
@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:
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.?
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:
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.
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