Unbearable Lag; Choppy game performance for no reason

[Pyromaniac]

Okay, this has never happened before. I used to be able to run the Sims 2 + all EPs on high graphic settings with barely any lag, but when I opened the game today, it was extremely choppy; the neighbourhood camera crawled like a snail, and I couldn't even enter the boolprop cheat without waiting a few seconds for each letter to load.

I have no clue what caused this, since nothing unusual happened to my computer. I tried lowering the graphic settings, but it made absolutely no difference. I turned off shaders (boolprop useshaders false) - no difference. I ran disk defrag and cleanup, closed background tasks, ran -w and -nosound mode but the game was still laggy like hell.

I ran dxdiag to check on my settings, and everything was the same as before. In a desperate last attempt, I deleted all the custom content I installed in the past 48 hours; still made no difference.

I'm just...stumped. :| I've got no idea why this happened, or how to fix it. Any help?

[caffeinated.joy]

It could be your computer just needs to be run through a basic maintenance. Trying running a disk cleanup, and defrag. It wouldn't hurt to run the Error check utility on your hard drive either.

[rebelmozzerella]

Maybe you have just too MUCH CC and you need to delete more. Games go slow with more CC, I would know. :smile:

[Pyromaniac]

Maybe you have just too MUCH CC and you need to delete more. Games go slow with more CC, I would know. :smile:

I doubt it. I have less than 400 files of CC, most of which are hacks/mods. Also, my game ran fine before.

It could be your computer just needs to be run through a basic maintenance. Trying running a disk cleanup, and defrag. It wouldn't hurt to run the Error check utility on your hard drive either.

I ran cleanup and defrag before (to no avail), but the error check utility? Where's that?

[ancienthighway]

Open the My Computer icon on the desktop.  Right click on the drive you want to check, select Properties, Tools Tab, Error-checking.

[Pyromaniac]

Ran the error check. Still laggy as hell.

Do I need a graphic card update or something? It shouldn't be the case, since everything was fine when I used my current one...

[rebelmozzerella]

Maybe there's a hack or mod conflict. Try running that thing that checks for conflict. It's somewhere on InSim...

[caffeinated.joy]

You mean the hack conflict utility? It's at Paladin's Place. Click Sims 2 on the left hand sidebar and go to objects.

[rebelmozzerella]

Oh well I saw the link on InSim somewhere...let me go look...

[caffeinated.joy]

yes, probably from Squinge. LOL. He's always giving the link to it.

[Pyromaniac]

Thanks, I'll give it a try. In the meantime, I noticed that if you go straight to University from the main menu, it becomes marginally less laggy. But if you enter the neighbourhood, the whole game crawls like a snail.

ETA: Nope, no conflicting hacks. This is driving me insane.

[Wednesday17]

Your copy of the Sims has expired it's shelf life, you got to get a new one, like Maxis designed it.

I'm sorry, I know this isn't funny when it happens to you, I am deeply ashamed. I had a bad problem myself for the last MONTHS: my CAS would terminate the game each time. Even without ANY custom content. I tried EVERYTHING I could think of. And just yesterday I found out what had caused that problem. As simple as a couple of mp3 files in the CAS music directory. One of them must've gotten corrupt.

What I want to say with that: think OUTSIDE the box. Look at the other files as well, which are not in the downloads folder. Look at your dvd, is something wrong with that? Did you do a full scan disk with surface check (sorry not familiar with the names of the routines on English windows)? Also, there's a tool which checks your RAM physically, try a google search. Did you try another performance hungry game and did it run smoothly? Hmm... that's all I can think of for now. Good luck and please report back.

[Dinki]

How many lots do you have in your neighborhoods? the more lots, espacially with families, especially of 5 or more sims and the more CC on the lots the laggier my game gets.

[Pyromaniac]

Your copy of the Sims has expired it's shelf life

I've already tried everything I could think of, so this seems like a plausible theory. I'm using an extremely old copy of Uni (Bought it when it was released), and I haven't installed any of my other EPs yet 'cause I wanted to "re-live" the whole University experience. I downloaded the basegame starter and ran my original Sims 2, and things went fine. Now I'm wondering if it's just a uni thing, and things will start working if I install Nightlife.
 
:lol: ...Wow. You know I'm getting desperate when I think installing more EPs will make the game run faster.
 

How many lots do you have in your neighborhoods?

I created a whole new neighbourhood with no families, no lots, and no scenery. Besides, this "lag error" was extremely sudden. It wasn't a gradual lag (where it gets laggier every time I run the game). I was able to play this yesterday with no issues, but now it slows to a crawl.

[ancienthighway]

I'm sure the expired shelf life is tongue-in-cheek.

Have you tried running Uni with BGS?