More Awesome Than You!

I recently added Free Time and Apartment Life to my library of Sims crap, and now I can not add any custom content without adding hours of load time to my game.  I tried looking for answers, and surfing for this topic already, with no success.  Can anyone please help?  Even just a link to a place this has already been covered would be appreciated.

Weirdly enough, I got Apartment Life and the game loads faster. o_O I'm not sure what's up with that.

In any case, how much space is on your computer and how much CC do you have? Could be just an overload.

Before I added Apartment Life, it was much slower.  I admit that.  Right now, I have NO custom content at all.  I took everything out, in order to get the game to load (less than 10 minutes).  I added back, only the hair files I had, and it took nearly 2 hours for the game to load.  Is this normal?

Not really normal, no.

Does your system meet the minimum requirements for the number of EPs/SPs you have?

Have you defragmented your hard drive lately? Fragmented hard drives can cause long load times and slowdowns in game play.

It could have to do with RAM/ processing speed. My desktop has all the EPs and SPs and it takes a while to load up, but not hours. You might need to update your computer with new hardware.

You could also get an external hard drive and put all of your CC in there to save space on your computer. Also, try using the Compressorizer on some stuff. If it's the hair files that made it start loading so slowly, maybe you have something in there that's really huge.

My system specs are: 

XP (Media Center Edition)
2.80GHz Pentium CPU
2.79 GB of RAM

I don't know about my video card, but I've been running up to Seasons for months (years?) with no issues.  My husband seems to think the video is alright.

I spent some time cleaning up, defragmenting, and just generally cleaning up the hard drive last night.  As well as adding an external drive to my system, in order to free up some more space.  I've not added anything back into the game yet, other than my default replacements, better names doo-dad, smaller vamp fangs, and invisible vamp skin.  I'm planning to get a few things from one of my favorite sites this afternoon and test it out again.  I will report back then.  Thank you for your replies.

Ok, so after adding in a few of Bruno's makeup items, and clothes, as well as a couple of objects from Paladin's place, ,I'm up to 30 minutes of load time.  Is this normal?  Should I just accept that this is how things are going to go with the addition of AL and FT??  I've not put in any hair, clothing, or furniture items yet...

Edit to add:

Ok, I'm up over an hour of load time, waiting to get into the first house.  Truly, if this has been discussed elsewhere, please direct me to those threads.  I am spoiled, and playing without custom content is not as fun for me.

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

Seriously?!  2.7GB of RAM is not enough?  Would another 1GB do it, or do I need even more than that?

I would have thought it should be ok with what you've got.  I ran the game with all EPs to FT on the old computer (XP) with 1GB of RAM, a video card with 128MB of its own memory and a small processor.  It loaded in under 10 minutes with 2GB of downloads and ran the game fine except on big lots with lots of sims present (I fiddled the number of visitors allowed).  If you're getting an hour loading time, I'd say something else is wrong.  Are you on XP oir Vista?  If it is Vista, you may need more RAMz, XP not so much.

She says that she's running XP, but I disagree that even Vista needs that much more RAM.  I have only 1.3GB more RAM under Vista, and I can load all EPs/SPs and 4GB of CC in 6 min.  My CPU is dual-core but a little slower, 2.6 GHz, which typically means slightly worse performance than a faster single-core. 

Something definitely feels wrong with 30 min. loading times on that computer.  How many individual files of CC do you have?  I noticed a big cliff in loading times when I exceeded 10,000 files.

Back to the OP, do you have a lot of old neighbourhoods with lots of character files/lots?  Free disk space could be a problem since you're probably overflowing your RAM.  How much room do you have on your hard drive now, after cleaning?

I didn't read the entire thread, I just wanted to post the image as part of my sheep schtick.  :D

I am running XP, and have a mostly clean game.  I deleted all my old hoods, families, etc. when I updated my expansion packs.  I have less than 200 cc files.  I have nearly 20 gigs of space on my hard drive that is free space.  I have 1 single person household, at this point.  So, help?

Well, we seem to have covered all the things that usually slow the game down.  Maybe look for another cause?

At this point, maybe it's not the game at all. Even at my most bloated with a crappy video card, my game loaded under 5 minutes.

Are you quitting all other apps when you load?  If not, try it.  Especially virus scanners soak up RAM and cycles.
See if things improve if you turn off your internet.

If none of that helps, then I think it's time to look through your startup items for suspicious processes.

Thank you, for all the help.  I've given up and am asking my computer tech type person to take a look at my machine.  I've ordered another gig of RAM and will be adding that when it arrives.  At this point, my load time is down to under 20 minutes, but I have the bare minimum installed.  It's just not as fun without all that really neat-o stuff.

I suggest you, and anyone else with this problem, first reduce your paging file to zero then defragment. When done, restart, then crank up your paging file as far as it will go, then see if the game works. It helps for me, and all I have is 2 gigs myself. But then again, I have an entire computer devoted to the Sims 2, so I'm probably not much help other than the performance increase I just told you. When in doubt, though, always scream SECUROM at the top of your lungs and mash your face on the keyboard until it goes away.

The paging file thing i just told you is lifted from this page here:

http://208.109.175.73/Windows_XP_Game_Optimization_Tips.htm

Alternatively, you could get rid of the SecuROM. Considering that there is a sticky devoted to it in this very forum, you have no excuse.

Anyone with the incompetence to not research SecuROM to begin with - in spite of all warnings - is just the kind of moron who will mash their head on the keyboard if you tell them to. At least they're rendered unable to use a computer from then on. It's like an Electronic Darwin Award. Don't get me wrong, it's not the people who simply don't know, it's the people who don't bother checking when they receive a warning.

I think this may a be a suitable end to this topic, I'm not sure if there's much more to say now.