More Awesome Than You!

My game has suddenly taken up snail racing, and the snail is winning when I try to load my game. When it first starts up there's a lag of black page that's the first tip off. Not long, but I've never had lag there before. Main loading bar goes along fine. When I select a fambly to play though, I can find myself waiting over 15 minutes for the first lurch of process. This change has occurred in about three days. I've taken out mods I put in recently. I've deleted all the custom hairs. I moved in and out just about any kind of custom content I think is large enough to affect load time. I even ran everything that should be ran through the compressor again. I've had no luck in changing up the fact my game is so slow all of a sudden. So, I'm wondering if it is the dcdb0 file that's magically causing this. I don't think 587, 048 KB (aka 573 MB) would be a correct number for that file. I'm not sure when the size ballooned to that, but it seems off. If so, then it's a matter of if I can find a replacement file or if I just need to reinstall again? If it isn't the file, then any suggestions on why it became so slow all of a sudden?

I have the same problem.  Reinstallation did nothing.  I was beginning to think my computer had a problem but I checked it out.  Just WA is involved.  I removed AM but it still ran super slow.  I'm trying different things like going back to old saves and deleting various CC.  Nothing helped yet.

Even without WA, I've got a real lag on my mom's computer. It's a bit like the 1 a.m. slow down: walk a few steps, stop, walk a few more steps, stop, walk a bit more, stop, pick up the baby, stop, play with baby, stop, feed the baby, stop, put the baby down, and it's two hours later without accomplishing much at all. I quit the game and delete the cache files, hoping a fresh start will help, but I wonder if it's just the cc hair on the child and toddler combined with school bus and work transport slow down whille playing a large lot. I really don't have large cc files (just a few modest-sized hair ones) and the only mod is AM. It is frustrating.

I've never really had any kind of lag that was beyond a sneeze's worth until really recently. That's why I'm wondering if it's just a reinstall needed, replacing the dcdb0 file since it's so damn huge, or something else entirely. At least it sounds like a reinstall really wouldn't do anything.

Reboot machine and make sure all unnecessary processes are disabled?  If I get a laggy, slow load on the game I reboot and reload.  That seems to work for me.

My game also appeared to hate SoundMAX and does not like the ATI Catalyst Controller.  I have replaced soundMAX and disable the ATI controller.  Also,  play offline and disable your antivirus during play.  That may help.

I sometimes have to reload 3 times or so to get a smooth game.

Two things I suggest you try:

Procmon, discussed in the MTS thread linked to here,  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17460.msg507158.html#msg507158 , can help you find problem package files that are loading a boatload of times.  Follow instructions in (I think) posts 250 and 283 of the MTS thread.  A couple of bad pieces of CC will slow your game down horribly.

This, putting CC together into dbc-style files, as described here:  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17746.0.html , also has sped my game up somewhat.  But you want to use the procmon method first, or you may end up just putting bad files into files with good ones and you'll then have a hell of a time identifying them.

I had forgotten about the Procmon. Well, I tried that and the first time it froze soon as I got through the loading. The second time I was alerted my computer memory wasn't big enough to handle this. Could it be the Windows 7 64-bit that's the problem?

Edit: Okay, tride running it again and it's blaming Sims 3 on the memory shortage, so the Procmon can't even register the events.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/eweneedrams.jpg)

Procmon did find a sims 2 package (hair that was on My Hair Blog that everyone uses) in my downloads folder and it kept trying to load it over and over.  I removed that and the game loaded and ran much faster. Now, with no mods other than AM, my sims are all skipping work and school.   Sometimes I get lag at midnight.   I keep getting the damn Error 12 on saves.  I am using "Save As" on saves.  So far, it appears that I get one good save for each time I restart the program.  The second save always craps out on me. 

With the latest update, it looks like EA is checking to see if we have bought the store items before properly installing them.  I tested this by buying a few.  Only those will install correctly.  The others that I downloaded from shared spaces are saying "Success" but the content is not there.  I ran the recompressor to make sure. 

I hadn't played this game since September and just got WA installed on New Year's weekend.  EA still does not have this program working correctly.  They seriously need to do beta testing with users before these releases and forced game updates.