Game suddenly extremely laggy

[thepeachyfaerie]

Hey everyone. So I had been playing my game happily for about a month. I had some CC/mods but it still ran very well on high settings. I have a great gaming laptop. 

Then it suddenly got super super laggy. I hadn’t downloaded any custom content for a few weeks, so it couldn’t have been a mod. I ended up removing about 3/4 of my Mods folder, downsized all my graphics to “low” and tried CCleaner and it still runs horribly. It’ll freeze for about 30 seconds, play for like 4 seconds, then freeze again. It’s unplayable. 

Any help would be very much appreciated as I absolutely love this game and I’m very upset that I can’t play. 

[puzzlezaddict]

@thepeachyfaerie  As a test, please move your entire Sims 4 user data folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop.  When you launch the game, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Don't add anything to this folder yet; just start a new save and see whether it lags.  Let me know either way.

If you still get lag in the clean folder, please run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

[Plankton027]

@thepeachyfaerie, I had similar issues a couple of weeks back and saw an article on gaming mode in Windows 10 causing problems in other games.

I disabled gaming mode (press windows key, choose settings and then gaming - on the left choose gaming mode and turn off).

So far my lagging issues have dissapeared but its too soon to say for certain that gaming mode was definately the cause.

You may want to try this as an alternative option if you are running Windows 10 as for me at least it seems to be a Microsoft issue rather then a problem

with the Sims or Origin.

[thepeachyfaerie]

Thank you for the quick reply! Sadly the lag/very slow startup persisted after a clean wipe. I have attached the DxDiag to this post. Thanks again!

[roberta591]

@thepeachyfaerie  Is your computer Windows 10 an upgrade from Windows 7?  You may have some corruption in the registry. Startup repair has been invoked probably because the of fault in the registry. Umpo.dll is user-mode power service and it may be missing. When Windows is installed there are actually two registry files created. If the primary gets corrupted Windows will try the backup registry to boot the system. The primary and backup may not always be the same. Run dxdiag again and see if the error startuprepaironline is still there. A possibility is that your computer's primary registry is corrupt and is booting off a Windows 7 backup registry? A registry problem should be corrected as this controls what the operating system loads.

[puzzlezaddict]

@thepeachyfaerie  From the errors in your dxdiag, I doubt this problem is about Sims 4 specifically.  Do you have a USB stick you don't mind erasing?  You might end up needing to reinstall Windows; you can do so without losing any data.  Start with some more basic scans though:

• Hit Windows key-X
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
• Inside the window that appears, copy and paste “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes into the window, and enter
• The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here
• After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key-X again
• Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator)”
• Inside the window, copy and paste “sfc /scannow” without quotes into the window, and enter
• Post the message you receive here

Please also run chkdsk, to be thorough.  Here's how:

• Hit Windows key-X
• Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
• Inside the window that appears, copy and paste "chkdsk /f /r c:" without quotes, and enter
• You'll get a message that you need to restart to run it; say yes
• When the scan is done, hit Windows key-X again, and choose Command prompt (admin) or Powershell (admin) again
• Copy and paste this command without the outside quotes: "get-winevent -FilterHashTable @{logname="Application"; id="1001"}| ?{$_.providername –match "wininit"} | fl timecreated, message | out-file Desktop\CHKDSKResults.txt"
• A .txt file with the chkdsk results will appear on your desktop.  Please attach it to a post.

[thepeachyfaerie]

@puzzlezaddict Here's the result from the sfc scannow: Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations. I didn't get an error from the first command.
I then did the chkdsk overnight then tried to do the get-winevent command and got this error message:
out-file : Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Windows\system32\Desktop\CHKDSKResults.txt'.
At line:1 char:132
+ ... init"} | fl timecreated, message | out-file Desktop\CHKDSKResults.txt
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : OpenError: ( [Out-File], DirectoryNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : FileOpenFailure,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.OutFileCommand

[puzzlezaddict]

@thepeachyfaerie  The first approach in this guide describes a different way to find your chkdsk results:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/40822-read-chkdsk-log-event-viewer-windows-10-a.html

Please copy the information for all the relevant Event Viewer entries into a text file (Notepad works fine), and attach the file to a post.

[thepeachyfaerie]

@puzzlezaddict Here is the text file!

[puzzlezaddict]

@thepeachyfaerie  Okay, there aren't any red flags in the report, which is good.  Please restart your computer, and move the Sims 4 user data file out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop.  (The next time your game launches, a clean folder will spawn with no content.)  Don't open anything except Origin and Sims 4, and play for at least 20 minutes, or until it crashes.  If it's too laggy to play, just let it run anyway.  Let me know how it runs.

When you've quit the game, check the Reliability Monitor for new entries.  Hit Windows key-R and enter "perfmon /rel" without quotes, and you'll see a chart of errors and updates with a column for each day; today is all the way on the right.  For any errors from today, click "View technical details," copy the information into a text document, and attach it to a post.  I want to see if there are any new entries, whether related to Origin or Sims 4 or not, since you ran the scans.

If you don't have any new entries, that's a good sign.  But if the game is still laggy, please try playing while your computer is not connected to the internet, again in a clean folder.  You can sign into Origin and put it in offline mode, then disable wifi and/or pull the ethernet cable.  Let me know whether it helps.