Sims Running Slowly

[playervlad1999]

I thought I would share this as it may be some help to someone.

 

I find that the Sims 3 can be a canary in the coal mine for general computer health.  My game usually runs smoothly with little lag, but recently it started slowing down.  I chalked it up to the inordinate amount of CC that I have crammed into my game and the fact that I have been playing some of my worlds for some time.  In fact I had started getting crashes due to lack of memory.

 

Fortunately I also had a couple of blue screens of deaths, which prompted me to scan for viruses and check for malware.  The computer came up clean.

After another system crash I opened the computer in safe mode and ran the malware check again, and lo and behold this time it picked up and removed the problem.  The computer has stopped crashing and The Sims program now seems to be running at a supercharged speed after playing for so long with the malware on my computer.

 

I plan to repeat this every month or so in safe mode to check that no other programs have sneaked onto my system.

 

The program that I use is 'Malwarebytes', which can be used for free.

Hope this is of use to someone.

Edited July 23, 2022 by playervlad1999

[landess]

There are a couple menus which show what is running on our systems. I've always been suspicious once the internet became 'stable' close to 20 years ago. People are clever, even if they are also deceitful. My trust is never given freely and it has served me well.

 

Malwarebytes, Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, are a few examples of several browser related programs I use to keep them 'off my lawn'.

[Brisbane Australia]

On 7/24/2022 at 9:33 AM, playervlad1999 said:

The program that I use is 'Malwarebytes', which can be used for free.

Hope this is of use to someone.

 

Thanks for the tip.

 

Although a little different from your game play speed improvements I've designed my TS3 to load as fast as possible.  I need to restart TS3 a lot when testing animations or poses.  On my old setup it took 7mins to go from Windows to playable.  Currently it takes 2 mins, but some bits I've done which might help others:

 

Have TS3 installed on it's own SSD, SSD's are so much faster to load.  The first game loading screen still takes it's time, but the second family loading screen flashes by.

 

No expansion packs, people won't like this but I don't have any expansion packs installed, although I have quite a few of them because there's a big sale here every few months and they sell used dvd's for $1 so I have quite a few but I never play them, the first few I installed and tried sucked so I never used the rest of them.

 

Those are what I think would have the biggest loading speed improvements, maybe it might help somebody.

 

 

 

[landess]

On 7/27/2022 at 9:18 AM, Brisbane Australia said:

No expansion packs, people won't like this but I don't have any expansion packs installed, although I have quite a few of them because there's a big sale here every few months and they sell used dvd's for $1 so I have quite a few but I never play them, the first few I installed and tried sucked so I never used the rest of them.

 

I run ALL EP's (no SP's) and it IS a lot for the engine to drag along. I just got used to all the new content (hairs, clothes, etc. etc. etc.) that each provides, not to mention the life states and towns/worlds. My start up to save/new game selection is about 2-3 minutes. Then depending on which save series - between 5 to 25 minutes loading. 8 to 10 minutes is average unless I choose a couple saves that are very old, very loaded (all sims custom with multiple outfits saved).

 

If I choose to load a 'big' save like Los Aniegos which is my most 'ambitious', then once started I usually switch to my other computer for a bit and check on progress instead of staring at a loading screen for quite a while.

 

Cleaning the saves is mandatory for me. After some time downloading and installing new CC also requires I MERGE packages or everything grinds to a halt as well.

 

As far as having a clean system - that's pretty much computing 101 nowadays. As hardware got (gets) better, programmers get sloppier. I learned this back around 1986 when working for a place like MicroCenter. The tech(s) there explained to me how The Apple Macintosh was an amazing machine, but since there was so much overhead, the programmers became lax while those at Microsoft whom were working with the early 'PC' architecture, were squeezing as much code as they could into the limited memory and processing power they had.

 

This was before Windows existed. Once Microsoft introduced Windows, everything began to change. There were several years where Hardware and Versions of both hardware and software were so critical to any program running the entire industry was on edge until things like DirectX, and other forms of Plug and Play programs would be incorporated into all software being used for the PC.

 

This is why I sometimes wonder how The Sims 3 runs at all. Amazing times. Clever people.

 

 

 

Edited July 28, 2022 by landess
Spelled out DirectX

[TheLadysGhost]

On 7/27/2022 at 9:18 AM, Brisbane Australia said:

big sale here every few months and they sell used dvd's for $1 so I have quite a few but I never play them, the first few I installed and tried sucked so I never used the rest of them.

Now I feel ripped off for paying $5 for used disks on Amazon! Also, there are a few mods on MTS that allow for you to select which EP's or SP's you run for each game.