@GouchoMarx Please test a new save, with no mods or custom content, for comparison's sake. I'm not telling you to delete your current save, only saying that this test will help narrow down the source of the issue.
Please also disable the Online Social Features setting, in Options > Game Options > Other, which has been causing lag for people who play with the EA App in offline mode. I don't think it's causing all the problems you've described, but it's better to eliminate additional sources of lag.
Hello, thank you firstly for your willingness to help!
I have tested a new save a few times - always without mods - and the lag is present straight away. I tested the save before adding my save data back and tried again after adding my save data back in - no change. Even when I turn the graphics all the way down to the lowest and untick the uncompressed textures & post processing effects boxes, the game still lags on all speeds. I've removed "The Sims 4" folder as well as let the game populate a new one. Again I tried playing before adding any of my data back in as well as after adding my data back in - no change.
The online features is something I hadn't tried yet - I just tried playing with this box unchecked both in online and offline mode and the lag still persists. I played for around 4 sim hours with lots of animation and camera stuttering - went into CAS and back out - the clock went back in time by almost 2 hours.
What would cause something like this to happen literally overnight? I didn't make any changes or do any updates the day before this started. The lag is present no matter what I try. I've read so many threads here about similar issues in the last few years and a DxDiag report is usually asked for - so I've attached mine if this would be useful. Thanks again for your support!
@GouchoMarx There are plenty of reasons lag can show up seemingly overnight, but it's usually that something updates (Windows, a graphics driver, the game, a different app you use all the time) and is no longer compatible with whatever else it needs to work with. It's also possible for some necessary resource to become corrupted, or for the system drive to effectively run out of storage, or a bunch of other things that aren't worth listing.
In your case, your dxdiag shows that the Nvidia graphics driver is from 2020, and it might have been reasonably compatible with Sims 4 before the patch but not now. You can simply install the newest available driver:
https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/216663/en-us/
Run the installer as an admin: right-click the download and select "Run as administrator." Choose the Custom (not Express) option, and check the box to perform a clean install. Restart afterwards and before trying to play.
Your dxdiag also shows that some Acer registration service is crashing pretty much all the time. So it's worth shutting that down, which might be as simple as disabling it in the Task Manager's Startup tab. If not, you can also disable the associated service in msconfig; let me know if you need help with this.
And the dxdiag would have been my next request, so thanks for providing it.
@puzzlezaddict I downloaded the driver in the way you outlined and it's saved to my C: drive (the only drive on my laptop). When I restarted and tried to launch the Sims 4, the issue is the same but it looks like the game is still using the 2020 driver. In Device Manager under "display adapters" I only see the same 2x graphics driver listed (Intel and Nvidia MX450) which is the one you said is from 2020. I tried adding it to display adapters manually by using the path the installation saved the download files to and it says drivers were successfully added, but it still only shows Intel and MX450. When I had the game running, I looked at Processes on Task Manager and it had data for MX450 saying it was in use, but it doesn't list the new driver I downloaded anywhere.
Is it as simple as downloading the driver data, saving it to your computer and that's it? Or do I have to connect it/set it up/configure it somehow once I have downloaded it? Or should downloading the data to my C: drive be sufficient, i.e. no further steps? How can I make the sims use it instead of the 2020 driver? Should I uninstall MX450?
I have looked all through my laptop for any program called Acer Registration Service and there's nothing on my laptop like this. I looked at what Acer apps were listed in the Task Manager's Startup Apps tab and there's nothing by this name or anything Acer-related. I also checked the Services tab and there's no service called this either. Anything Acer-related in this tab is already set to "Stopped".
Any ideas on how to activate the driver data I just downloaded? P.S. I've included some screenshots of the points mentioned above.
@GouchoMarx When you download a new driver, you download an executable file, ending in .exe. (Sometimes it's a .zip that you need to extract first.) This is the installer for the driver. You double-click the .exe to run it, and the installer is what actually installs the driver. The install location is within protected Windows space, so no, you can't simply extract the data and place it in the correct location.
Installing the driver won't change what you see in Display adapters. That lists the graphics processing unit(s), not the driver(s). Your GPUs are the Intel integrated chip and the Nvidia MX450; the drivers are software that tells the OS how to use the hardware.
I don't know where the Acer Registration software is hiding, but it has to be somewhere if it's throwing that error. If you want to look more closely, try installing Everything, from VoidTools, which is a much better search tool than the one built into Windows. Search for Acer and see what you find; you can list the file path for me if you want.
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