Sims 4 stops responding/hangs

@Orphelus  Thanks for providing the dxdiag and Reliability Monitor info, which makes things a lot easier for me.  The AppHangB1 in the RM is a somewhat-generic error that is often related to the graphics driver, and there are several in your dxdiag as well.  However, in this case, I would guess that the problem might be your old speakers, which come with an old and possibly incompatible driver.  Your dxdiag also lists a number of crashes of the USB 3 driver which are probably not serious but should still be addressed.

Please unplug all USB 3 devices and all sound devices, and restart the computer.  You can reconnect any USB 3 devices that don't involve sound output or capture.  Open Sims 4 and see how it runs.  Please test with no mods or custom content for now to avoid adding potentially complicating factors.  If the game still stops responding, please look for any new RM errors that happened after the restart and provide their info, just as you did before.

If the game works fine, plug only the speakers back in and test again.  I suspect they're the issue here, but if they're fine, add one more device—it's possible that the problem is a conflict between two devices or their drivers rather than the speakers alone.

Still hangs, I unplugged all USB 3 devices and sound devices and restarted. I can't unplug the realtek sound device since it's part of the motherboard, but I did replug my keyboard and mouse. No mods or CC on a new save. Here is another DxDiag and RM report. I also forgot to mention I do use Voicemeeter Banana which is a virtual mixer for my sound devices and it uses virtual audio devices/drivers for routing sound.

@Orphelus  The new error is the same as the old one.  There are also a couple new USB 3 driver crashes in the new dxdiag, although I can't tell whether those were from before you saw my reply and unplugged everything.  You can check yourself in the Reliability Monitor—these errors will show up as LiveKernelEvent 144, and their timestamps should make things clear.

For the issue itself, please test in a clean boot, again with everything unplugged except for your keyboard and mouse.  Here's how:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

The one service to leave enabled is the EABackgroundService, which the EA App needs in order to run.  Disable the rest as described.

When you reboot your computer, go through the Task Manager's background processes list shutting down any service that doesn't absolutely need to be running, for example anything from MSI Afterburner to RGB software might still be enabled.  If you accidentally kill a critical process and it doesn't restart on its own, just reboot your computer again.

Don't open anything other than Sims 4 and the EA App while testing, not even a browser window.  If this helps, you can start reintroducing hardware and software in whatever order you like, testing in batches or using the 50/50 method, whatever works for you.

@puzzlezaddictI tried it with a clean boot. The only non-Microsoft services running were the EABackgroundService and the Steam client service (I got the game from steam), the game froze again when my sim went to the park while it was raining.

I noticed my Adobe Creative Cloud program and Malwarebytes were still running, I ended those processes and services and the game was running smoothly until I noticed that it crashed when my sim hopped in the shower. I tried it 2 more times immediately upon loading the save and the same thing happened, the game just froze as soon as my sim entered the shower, 3 times in a row.

No CC, no mods, no custom tray files. I already verified the game's files through Steam and it found nothing that needed to be replaced and I can't repair the game through the EA App since the game is managed by Steam. As per usual here is my DxDiag with only keyboard and mouse plugged in and the RM report. I'm debating on going through with a fresh new install of the game.