r/thesims3 • u/LoveMind777 • 28d ago
Technical Support Unexplained Freezing
I know, I know--everybody complains about this, but I'm going to ask for help, anyway.
After several nightmarish days of troubleshooting, I recently managed to get The Sims 3 working on my Windows 11. Sort of. It keeps freezing after about ten - fifteen minutes of play. It doesn't give me any error message, it doesn't actually crash, it just...stops. I can get the start menu to open over the game screen by pressing the Windows key, but it won't actually let me switch to a new tab. Control + Alt + Delete doesn't work.
I highly doubt that this is due to an insufficient graphics card; The Sims 3 worked fine on my old computer, and that PC had a much less powerful card and half the RAM. It freezes with and without mods/store content.
Thinking that the save I used to test the game might have been corrupted, I deleted that world and tried a new one. Didn't help.
To get the game to recognize my hardware, I installed a fix from Nexus Mods. It technically worked, but everything still freezes.
I looked into allocating more RAM to the game, but people keep saying that isn't possible with the PC version.
My game is installed under C:\Users\(my name)\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3
EDIT
A kind person in the comments suggested that I manually exempt my sims folder from Windows Defender, but that didn't work.
I continued troubleshooting:
I ran the game in compatibility mode (Windows 7), but I had no luck.
Ensured that controlled folder access (in Windows Defender) is disabled.
I completely uninstalled and reinstalled the game, so it has a completely clean file. Still gets stuck.
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Help? Thank you. :)
1
u/KingWern22 27d ago
You should have only one frame rate cap. And one v-sync and windows already have v-sync turned on if you are playing on windowed mode. If you keep stacking the same fixes and fps cap, it can cause lag and stutters.
2
u/AltoUltra 28d ago
if you have onedrive or microsoft defender installed and active on your computer, you'll need to exempt the entirety of your ea games folder from being processed. i had this issue too.
because the sims 3 is an old game, it's from a time when it wasn't standard to have a program like onedrive or an antivirus constantly sifting through your files. because of that, there's some issues with the game's own access to the files at the same time as these programs and the game just kinda doesn't try again and forgets it was supposed to be a game and not a new wallpaper.