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njmille's avatar
njmille
18 days ago
Solved

Sims game freezes every few seconds

My game has been running perfectly with no issues. Out of nowhere it started randomly freezing every few seconds. It stays completely frozen for about a minute, then unfreezes, only to freeze again a...
pc
  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    17 days ago

    @njmille  Everything looks good in the hwinfo log, which is great for your computer but means the answer is elsewhere.  I can see the fps drops, and the proccessor and graphics card decreasing their loads significantly; in fact, everything shows the same brief spikes of activity followed by a bit of time spent almost idle.  Point is, I see in the log what you see on the screen.

    Since the clean boot didn't help, please try it again, while offline, except in a new admin Windows account.  Make it local, as in, don't link it to your Microsoft account.  You'll be able to launch Sims 4 without reinstalling anything.  Please disable your antivirus for this test.  Since you're going to be offline and won't open anything other than Sims 4 and the EA App anyway, your computer should be safe.

    When testing the game, play in one of the base game worlds, without anything special added: no lot traits, no debug items, etc.  You don't even have to play much; just let the game clock run and see how things go.

    Please also make sure you're disabling everything in the clean boot that might be interfering with Sims 4.  A random Razer app or similar could be an issue even though it doesn't throw any errors.

puzzlezaddict's avatar
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
17 days ago

@njmille  Please try playing in a clean boot:

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 doesn't help, try the clean boot again but with your computer offline.  You can sign into the EA App and put it in offline mode, then disable wifi and/or disconnect the ethernet cable before pressing Play.

njmille's avatar
njmille
17 days ago

I tried the clean boot and the game still had the same issue. 

I then tried the clean boot again with my computer offline and ethernet cable disconnected and the game still had the same issue as before. 

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    17 days ago

    @njmille  Then I'd like to see the results of some hardware monitoring, to find out whether there's an issue with heat or something else on the hardware side.  Please download hwinfo (it's free) from here:

    https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

    You don't need to install anything; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you like.  If you do want the full installer, be sure to click the button for hwinfo itself, not for lansweeper.

    Restart your computer, open hwinfo, choose Sensors Only, and click the button that's a sheet of paper with a + to start logging.  Save the log file to your desktop for easy access.  Wait five minutes, then open Sims 4 and play for at least 20 minutes.  Don't alt-tab out of the game or run any other programs, aside from the EA App of course, while you're testing.  When you're done, click the same button to stop the logging.

    Please upload the log to the third-party filesharing site of your choice (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and link it for me.  Either leave it in .csv format or, if you're going to use OneDrive, create a .zip file, and don't open the log before uploading it, or else my log reader might not be able to interpret it.

      • puzzlezaddict's avatar
        puzzlezaddict
        Hero+
        17 days ago

        @njmille  Everything looks good in the hwinfo log, which is great for your computer but means the answer is elsewhere.  I can see the fps drops, and the proccessor and graphics card decreasing their loads significantly; in fact, everything shows the same brief spikes of activity followed by a bit of time spent almost idle.  Point is, I see in the log what you see on the screen.

        Since the clean boot didn't help, please try it again, while offline, except in a new admin Windows account.  Make it local, as in, don't link it to your Microsoft account.  You'll be able to launch Sims 4 without reinstalling anything.  Please disable your antivirus for this test.  Since you're going to be offline and won't open anything other than Sims 4 and the EA App anyway, your computer should be safe.

        When testing the game, play in one of the base game worlds, without anything special added: no lot traits, no debug items, etc.  You don't even have to play much; just let the game clock run and see how things go.

        Please also make sure you're disabling everything in the clean boot that might be interfering with Sims 4.  A random Razer app or similar could be an issue even though it doesn't throw any errors.

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