Lag (black screen) while loading

[Nova]

Up until a few months ago, my game ran very smoothly.  It took my game a minute to get from clicking the desktop shortcut to entering a neighborhood.  Now I am stuck with an infuriating problem.  My game suffers from an unsightly black screen that pops up right after I hit the shortcut.  The blackness will last from one minute to three, after which it  continues on to the EA logo and loading screen.

The tech side of things:   The game and packs are bought legally.  I do have an EP9 no cd crack exe.  I have tried other cracks and they produce the same result.  Using the game's original disc to load also leads to the black lagging screen issue.

I am very impatient and I want my short and snappy load time back! {insert dramatic tears here} If anybody has any comments or suggestions to aid me in finding a solution, please step forward.  My last resort will be to uninstall and reinstall.  Must. Not. Happen.

[J. M. Pescado]

You still get an EA logo, apparently. Have you tried deleting all the intro movies entirely, so it will skip straight to the load screen?

[Nova]

Yes.  From this folder, correct?  C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Double Deluxe\Base\TSData\Res\Movies

I already had them out of that folder.  Is there another folder I am supposed to be deleting them from?

[Marvin Kosh]

You also want to remove them from the directory of the latest expansion, if present.

[Nova]

All of them are out of the folders, but the problem remains.  Every single time I see that black screen my blood pressure shoots through the roof.  I know there is an easy solution.  Now to find it.

Edit:  Zero downloads.  Super vanilla.

[J. M. Pescado]

My guess is that your problem is hardware. Some piece of hardware is damaged and not running as quickly as it should be, forcing the computer to wait for it. Aging hard drives sometimes develop bad spots which take longer to read, and if your data is in one of those spots, it may suddenly develop hiccups as it reads. This is generally a precursor to total drive failure. Have that checked out.

[Nova]

Hmm.  I loaded the game on my new computer a few months ago, and the problem started happening shortly after install.  If the comp is already conking out, watch out for a raging lunatic.

[leaths]

Are you running Vista? I have the same problem. On my old computer (with XP) the game started up fine. When I got my new PC (with Vista), the first few times the game loaded quickly, then suddenly started getting that black screen before loading. It doesn't last long for me--five seconds tops--but it is annoying. I could never figure out what caused it, nor could I ever make it stop--although it doesn't happen in windowed mode. I just chalked it up either to a quirk in Vista or my graphics card.

[Nova]

Yup, Vista for me.  When I load the game in windowed mode, the black screen doesn't appear.  However, the game just sits in the background (doing nothing) for up to a minute before the window will pop up on the screen.  Once the window pops up, first the EA logo flashes, then the regular loading screen appears.

[GelatinousSubstance]

I had two similar problems with an AMD quad core and an nVidia Video card.

With Vista, the screen would go white (which bothers me more because I have sensitive eyes). It does the same thing on my daughter's laptop.

When I switched over to windows 7, the screen goes black for the first bit now, which it also does on my husband's computer.

All these systems are fairly new (less than a year old), and all have AMD CPUs (with different numbers of cores) and nVidia video cards of varying models (if that helps to find a common denominator).

My best guess is that it's either hardware or driver (or both) related.

Other than it being annoying to the user though, there isn't much to worry about.

[Nova]

Intel and nvidia for this girl.  You all are freaking me out about the hardware problem scenario.  I'm thinking a backup is in order.  Like now.

[GelatinousSubstance]

Backups are always in order, regardless of the situation.

However, I don't think you need to panic. What you're experiencing is a common phenomenon among the newer machines and the newer drivers. It doesn't mean your computer's going to explode. It just means it's going to annoy you, and that your head may explode. Nothing serious, seriously.

Did you install a new driver or allow a Windows Update recently? The root of the problem probably points to software drivers and particular models of nVidia - from the sounds of it - and you're probably just going to have to suck it up and deal with it.

[leaths]

I'm running an Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT and an AMD processor (triple core). I have updated the graphics driver within recent memory, but IIRC, this starting happening before the update.

I agree that it seems like it's merely a visual annoyance and not sign of impending failure.

[Nova]

Well, I have hope after the last few posts.  I also wondered if it could be a video driver issue, but my machine is being uncooperative in updating drivers right now.  I'll try and check it out at a later date, as I'm out of town and don't want to totally screw things up without my backups. 

The perplexing thing is the fact that after I installed the game, it was loading perfectly fine.  Out of nowhere, poof.  Black screen. 

Head explosion or computer explosion.  As sick as this is, I'll take the former.   

[GelatinousSubstance]

I thought you'd be interested in knowing that it would appear the nVidia driver I was using was at fault. I was curious after this post and just updated my driver to the most recent one.

Version: 195.62 WHQL
   
Release Date: 2009.11.26

The black screen seems to have disappeared.

I never really paid it much mind because it was happening on all my machines, except for one, and I just decided to accept it since it seemed like something I was stuck with and caused no real issues other than a small annoyance.

[Nova]

Hope!  I'm giong to try one more time to download that update.  I had kind of a mess the last time I made an attempt, so hopefully things will go better now.

Edited to add that the driver installation worked, but the black screen remains.  Back to square one.

[GelatinousSubstance]

Did you uninstall the previous video driver before installing the new one?

If you don't uninstall the previous driver, previous issues may remain.

[Nova]

I sure did.  I'm glad your problems have vanished.  Nice to know somebody can load their game without wanting to throw a large tv out the window.

[Alex]

I'm also getting this. Win7 Ult 64, AMD and Nvidia here. While I agree it seems to be relatively harmless, it is weird and annoying.