Game freezes up except for the plumbbob and shadows.

[leopoldstotch]

When I had the ARRed copy, this never happened and I was also using an older laptop. After buying a rather expensive new laptop, I decided I'd also buy Sims 3 as I had a lot of problems with the ARRed one up to the point I couldn't uninstall it to properly update to the 1.3 patch earlier in the month.

I've heard of the 1 AM freeze, but this freeze lasts longer to the point where I had to close it via task manager... What. And also, the freezes don't happen at 1 AM, although it happens while it is dark so I'm unsure. I have the most recent patch and AM version update. I tried searching for this problem and didn't really find much information about this.

[Sigmund]

At the risk of asking an obvious question, are you sure this new laptop has the hardware to run the game? Price alone doesn't necessarily guarantee good gameplay. How does it run without any hacks or patches?

[leopoldstotch]

I don't know, because I immediately updated my game before even playing it for the first time. 

My laptop is a Toshiba t6500, if that helps.

[Sigmund]

If you don't want to reinstall, at least test the game out without any hacks or other custom content installed. Does this problem occur with multiple families? Does the game always freeze at specific times? When the game freezes, how long does it last?

Basically, more information would be good here.

[leopoldstotch]

I did as you instructed and my gut tells me it's 99 percent sure it's coming from AwesomeWare, although I'm sort of wary as my much older, crappy, blue-pixelated display, laptop could run perfectly fine with my ARRed copy last month until the 1.3 patch came out. (couldn't install it)

It seems to happen with families of one more often, and usually it freezes at nighttime, which means I may just not have checked or did and forgot and it could've been 1 AM. But when I redownloaded everything back in, I noticed the freeze didn't always happen at 1 AM. Yup, I kept track of sim time. Also, the graphics are terribly ugly despite running smoothly on a high-everything resolution. It usually becomes more detailed after a minute or so though, so that's probably some unrelated glitch.

Basically, it usually freezes with the plumbbob still moving and the Sims' animations still on (for instance, they'd be frozen in time fishing forever) and I can move my mouse, but EVERYTHING on the game is absolutely unclickable. Then the last time, it completely fucked up and I couldn't even get into task manager to quit Sims 3. I also couldn't move my mouse. Wtf.


Note: I will change my game settings to that on my old laptop, as Window Mode could perhaps be borking it (doubt it...), or Indie Mod (not Core).

[J. M. Pescado]

Make sure you're using the latest, as some of the freeze-related issues are stomped out in the current version.