Insimenator.org

Ever since I've downloaded custom content I've had reason to believe that it's been making my game lag or take forever to load. The places it takes the longest to are:

THE loading screen before it asks you which neighborhood you want to play.

The other two are when I'm in CAS and I want to select eyes. it takes about 5 minutes to load the actual CAS and another 5 minutes to go back to the neighborhood screen and to the house.

From time to time it takes forever for it to do the simplest of tasks like walking or teleporting, becoming a plantsim, werewolf, dying:blob6:, coming back to life (lol)

Is there anyway at all of making my Sims 2 go faster without screwing around with the graphics? Whew, that sounds impossible.

Well... the CAS and main loading screens are just CC issues.  The more custom items you have in your game, the longer it takes for it to load.  I'd say get rid of any custom content that you find yourself not using at any point in the game.  It's surprising how much you'll find that you really don't use after all, and is just wasting space in your Downloads folder.  My game loads 10 minutes quicker than before because I got rid of at least 4GB of downloads I hardly ever used.  ;)

My game loads pretty slowly, but everything else seems fine. You should probably delete your useless CC. I do that every few months so I can maintain my 52% of free space in my computer's memory. lol

i use quite a hefty amount of custom content by it is definetly under 4gigs.

Well obviously you are using much more than your computer can handle since it is taking a long time for your game to start.

Either clean unuseful cc or add RAM and/or get a better videocard and/or a new computer.

There are not much choices here.

Do a simple test and totally move your donwload folder and see how long it will take for your game to load, you'll see it is cc related, the more you have the longuest the game is taking to load, simple as that.

FLIPPING HECKKKKKKK MANNNN, genetics still wont work! howwwww does everyone get all their genetics to work, such as the ones i downloaded, like...
-EYES
-EYE SHADOW
-BLUSH
-LIPGLOSS
-ACCESSORIES (such as shades, bags, earrings)
-ANNDDD SKINTONES

!

some of them appear in the thingy when im making a sim, i can see them, but when i click on them they don't work it just sets the thing i clicked on (such as mascara) it to an eye shadow that already comes with the sims and thats rubbish......
eyebrows won't work too, it says the file is in there but when i click on it it gives the sims no eyebrows or just doesn't change from the default setting...
can somebody
PLEASE
HELP ME!!!!!!!!!
ive downloaded simPE already but when i try open it it dont want to open, i double click on a package file that has the simpe icon next to it, yet it does not open :/
can someone please help me coz ive been wanting them to work for soo long and it just wont work!!!! :(

:smile bi:  I'm sure you could get better results about your question if you don't "hijack" a thread that's somewhat unrelated to it.  It's not nice to the person who still hasn't had his own question answered yet, and it'd be easier for everyone to help you out if you posted your own thread with the question.  ;)  Anyways, here are my questions for you, killacammy...

Did you uncompress the files that they were in?  (.zip/.rar)

Is your downloads folder spelled like this?:  Downloads (Big 'D', little 's')  If it's not spelled like that, then that's the most likely case in why your genetics aren't showing up.  The game can be picky when it comes to the Downloads folder and custom content.  

And have you tried deleting your Groups.cache and Accessory.cache files, then restarting the game?  On a few occasions, that also helps.  

As for SimPE not starting up for you... If you have Windows XP, have you installed the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en) (or 3.0 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=10cc340b-f857-4a14-83f5-25634c3bf043&DisplayLang=en) if you have Vista)?  That download is required for it to work properly.  ;)

Also, you might try defragmenting your computer..in addition to the other suggestions offered here. In fact, Maxis itself suggests this in their manuals as a way to keep your game running smoother. Also you might try to do a disk cleanup, and if you can, a registry clean, using a free registry cleaner.
Going through your downloads on a weekly basis, eliminating what you don't want, need or use that often is a very good idea.

well, Tenshii~Akari... if you take a look at how this whole thread started, you would see that i DID make my own post.. i made me own post and then no one replied to me.. and yes it was unfair when the whole world began to post over my thread, ignoring my question for a second time, then my post never got answered!!!!!!!!!!! and no, i can't just send a thoudand and one posts witht he same message because that would be a lot of hastle for 'me' to check and plus its annoying, i've seen it before... so :happy8:
and thank you for the information, i dont know about the windows one...
i uncompressed the files, i have winRAR and put the package files in the collections folder...
but i didn't delete the .cache files... but i have now and i will try out my game so thank you!!! :D if i don't reply then that means it worked and it means thank you very much :smile bi:, or i might reply back hehe but thank you :)             

have you tried to enable the custom content in the blue box with downloads that opens when the game is loaded? click on "Enable content" and restart the game.

You're very welcome, killacammy, and I hope it works well for you.  I still don't think it's nice to do that though, even if you feel people were ignoring your question.  You wouldn't want people doing that in your topic, now would you?  :toothy3:  (in fact, I don't think I ever did get to see the thread you started... :scratch:  maybe if you had bumped it up instead, I probably would've caught it and answered it just as quick along with the rest of the ones I posted in.  Believe me, if you did that earlier, it'd sure be a lot less confusing to some of the people trying to find the answer to the main question, but instead havie to read through another completely different help question other than the one originally asked.  ;) )

Back to the original question:  jordinary, if it's not CC causing the problem, you might also want to check out some optimization tips that Paladin of Sim Wardrobe (http://www.simwardrobe.com) made for Windows XP users that you can find in the Tutorials section of the site.  (And I believe it can also be used for Vista, but I'm not completely sure.)  You might also want to clear off/fix any registry errors that may be junking your computer up, and maybe even check for some other space-takers, too.  I'd suggest using these two programs below:

CCleaner Registry Cleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/)

Ad-Aware (http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-2007/3000-8022_4-10045910.html?part=dl-ad-aware&subj=dl&tag=top5&cdlpid=10045910)

I use these frequently now, along with following the optimization tips.  And ever since I re-installed my game, I haven't had any hiccups whatsoever, speed or graphics wise.  ;)  I also use a free/shareware memory manager called CachemanXP (http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_charisma_page=product&id=7).   (purchasing a license for it just enables one extra feature, but you can still continue to use it for free since there's no trial period.)  It definitely helps in recovering your computer's RAM faster than if you let your regular default settings wait until you're almost out of available memory, and a few other things.  ;)

I certainly hope you put the package files in the Downloads folder and NOT in the collections folder as stated above.  That'd be the reason that they're not showing up in your game.

yep i have [the raven] tried enabling custom content... everything else works but not the skins and things i said in that other post (clothes work and hair works)

Tenshii~Akari (http://www.insimenator.net/member.php?u=40652)..mkay then, it doesn't want to work. thank you for helping me but i deleted those two '.cache' files and it still wont work! nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
if u want to see my first thread then go to my profile and look at my threads.. and people have already posted over my post, not like its gotten to me or anything, and even though it 'may mot be nice' it was still not nice to make me feel ignored! (people, not you)

megativity13 (http://www.insimenator.net/member.php?u=76950), if i put them in the downloads folder, NOTHING will work...but thank you

Killacamy, not sure if this is of any help but do you have these items in a subfolder of your downloads folder? This comes to mind as all your other CC shows. I have heard that these items may not show if in a subfolder. If so remove them to desktop and put them back in the main Downloads folder.  The program Sims2 Pack Clean Installer can be very useful for moving CC around in game and it does many other things as well. Just right click on the file and it will give you options to move/delete/etc. If you don't have it and would like it you can find it here (http://sims2pack.modthesims2.com/). Hope you get it solved soon.

EDIT: I see you deleted goups cache but you may also want to try deleting cigen if you haven't. It is related to bodyshop so maybe that will help too.

Check your thread, Killacammy.  I just posted my response in it.  ;)

oh my living days... thank you, everyone, ive been trying to get them to work for SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO loonnggg and now they work!!!!!!
i renamed the collections folder 'Downloads' and deleted accessory.cache and groups.cache and cigen and it works!!!!!!!! thank you lot soooo much, especially Tenshii~Akari ! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

You probably have a few objects that are insane in poly count. I had a bed that was almost 40000F not saying whom it was from(the game ran fine with them in it after it loaded) and my game was taking about 8/10 minutes to load with 4 gigs of of CC and 8 gigs of ram. My first clue was when I went into the folders and arranged them by size I had a bed that was over 15 megs. A fountain that was about 10 megs. I looked at them in SimPe and was like oh my gosh! Opened my game and deleted them from my lot, then I deleted just those two things from my downloads and my game went from 8/10 minutes loading time back down to about 4/5 minutes. Seriously, just those two things and all their recolors.