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FrozTurtle's avatar
FrozTurtle
4 years ago

Sims 4 Loading Screen Freezes! Halp Plz! :(

I need help. My Sims 4 game keeps getting stuck on the loading screen when I try to load into a household. For some context, I have quite a bit of cc, most of the expansion packs, and a few game and stuff packs.

I was playing my game just fine last Wednesday, when my dad came home. I asked him if I could buy Get Together and Island Living (because of the sale), and he let me. After the packs downloaded, I opened the game again, tried to load back into the household I was playing in, and then . . . the loading screen wouldn't stop. I thought it was just a glitch, so I tried closing the game and opening it again. But the same thing happened.

Now, I'm not good at technology, so looking up possible solutions scared me.

Some people say to move your save data to your desktop, reinstall the game, and then put your save data back. But I don't know how to do that, and I'm afraid if I try, I'll mess something up, and lose my Sims forever.

Others say it's because of broken cc. But I hadn't downloaded any cc between the time I was playing the game normally, purchased Get Together and Island Living, and tried to play again but couldn't. So I don't think that's the problem. I even checked by turning mods off, and playing that way, but the loading screen still froze.

Now, ever since this happened, OneDrive and Backup and Sync have been redownloading things I think? OneDrive says that I deleted many files (which I didn't), and asks if I want to restore them or not. I always say yes, because I'm afraid if I don't, it'll delete something important. But that still doesn't work. Then you have Backup and Sync, which (most of the time) looks like it's just redownloading houses from the gallery. Then, after a LONG time of redownloading, it'll say a big number of the files (which look important I think???) couldn't sync. My only options are to resync all (which starts the process all over), or to close the page.

OneDrive also tells me that I've run out of space, and need to upgrade. But my dad says I still have plenty of storage on my computer. Maybe I ran out of storage on my OneDrive? But then I hear from other people that OneDrive is the problem, and I don't know how to stop OneDrive (let alone if it's a good thing to turn it off).

I also checked if my PC has the minimum requirements to run the Sims properly, and it does! I don't know what's going on! I'm scared I'm going to lose my Sims, and I've made SO MUCH PROGRESS!

Please, if you have any idea what might be wrong, and how to fix it, let me know. But please give me a step by step process, because like I've said, I'm not good at technology and don't want to mess anything up.

Also, sorry for the long explanation, but I feel like I needed to explain everything.

pc

3 Replies

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    4 years ago

    @FrozTurtle  You're correct, OneDrive offers a limited amount of storage for free, after which you'd have to pay for more, and you've likely run out of that.  There's no reason that OneDrive needs to sync your Sims 4 data though.

    Please first make sure that you have a copy of the Sims 4 user folder, the one normally in Documents\Electronic Arts, stored somewhere else.  Ideally it would be on an external drive or USB stick, but if you don't have one handy, leaving it on your desktop is fine for now.

    Next, disable OneDrive's automatic syncing of Documents.  You don't need to disable OneDrive entirely, although you can if you want to.  The point is to block it from syncing your Sims 4 files all on its own.

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/choose-which-onedrive-folders-to-sync-to-your-computer-98b8b011-8b94-419b-aa95-a14ff2415e85

    This will likely remove the copy of the Sims 4 folder in Documents\Electronic Arts, leaving just the copy in OneDrive.  But you can either download that folder manually, or put the spare copy back.  Once you're done, you can delete whatever you don't need to keep in OneDrive.  You may have a number of copies of various Sims 4 files; you can delete just the older ones or everything, but if you delete everything, make absolutely sure you have a current copy of the folder on your hard drive or on an external drive.

    Once OneDrive is no longer interfering, try to load your save again.  If you still get an infinite loading screen, quit, restart your computer, and try to load a different save, a new one if you don't already have multiple saves, just to make sure the game itself is working.

  • FrozTurtle's avatar
    FrozTurtle
    4 years ago

    Hi there! Thank you for responding to me.

    I did what you suggested though, and it still freezes on the loading screen. I tried restarting my computer after deleting everything from onedrive and putting them back on my computer. It seems to have put all my files back in onedrive, as if I never deleted them. My friend who's better at computers then I am suggested that it might be defaulting to onedrive? I currently only have one save game. Is my save corrupted? Did I put the game back in the wrong place?

    I'm not sure what to do anymore, and I don't want to lose the save I made so much progress on. But at this point it looks like I might. Do you have any suggestions?

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    4 years ago

    @FrozTurtle  Please first make a backup copy of your save.  Ideally, it would be on an external hard drive or USB stick, but you can also upload it to a free filehosting service: for example, if you have a Gmail account, you also have free Google Drive storage.  Point is, if this troubleshooting somehow removes your save, you can restore the backup instead of losing it entirely.

    Please make another copy of your save, this time somewhere convenient like your desktop, and then disable OneDrive entirely, which you can do by unlinking:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-disable-or-uninstall-onedrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0

    If you get an error that you can't disable OneDrive, let me know exactly what the error says.  Otherwise, launch the game, start a new save, play in live mode for a few minutes, and try to save your progress.  If it works, great, you can delete the new save file and put your existing one back.  If not, please let me know what error you see.

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