Entire TS2 game moving in slow motion?

[thelovelylizzy]

I loaded up my game today and proceeded to spend a lot of time redecorating the Goths' house in Pleasantview, so the game was on pause for awhile.  When I left their house to go play the Dreamers, without having played the Goths at all, I started playing and noticed that the Sims seemed to be moving in slow motion... not as in, lag; they were walking in perfectly smooth slow motion.

I checked snootysims to see if there was a cheat that I had somehow activated.  I tried slowmotion 0 and the slow motion continued.  I tried slowmotion 8, the slowest speed, and the Sims were barely moving.  Back to 0 and they were in the original state of slow motion.

I switched to a different household and the same thing was happening.

I closed out of the game and re-loaded.  This time, the slow-pan camera that goes when you enter the neighborhood was noticeably slower than usual.  I can't remember if it did that when I loaded the game to play the Goths or not.

I closed the game, deleted the cache files in the My Documents > EA Games folder.  Re-loaded, still slow motion.

I don't have any hacks/mods in my game.  My custom content is limited to bonus downloads from buying packs at certain stores.  I'm not sure if a download can cause spontaneous slow motion, but I took out the Download folder and launched the game again, just in case.  No change; still in slow motion.

My computer has never given me any problems like this before.  The graphics in the game are still pristine and there's no lag... just the slow motion.  I have all the expansion and stuff packs installed, minus Happy Holiday, and my game is fully patched.  In the four years I've been Simming, I can count the number of times my game has crashed on one hand.

As you can imagine, this is rather annoying.  I'm downloading an update for my graphics driver right now in case that has something to do with it, but beyond that, I have no idea what to do.  Any help would be seriously appreciated!


EDIT: The updated driver somehow fixed it!  I'm still curious, though -- does anyone know what might have caused it?  The driver hadn't been updated in months before this, so is it normal that it would cause something like the slow motion to randomly happen?

[J. M. Pescado]

Did time also slow down? Because that sounds awesome.

[thelovelylizzy]

Funnily enough, the clock was just fine. 

[thelovelylizzy]

If anybody is still reading this: the slow motion started again, and I'm definitely out of ideas this time.  Deleted the cache files, removed Downloads folder, tried the cheat, etc.  Nothing helped.  This time, though, the clock has also turned to slow motion (I'm pretty sure it was unaffected last time, but maybe it was and I just didn't notice?)

After comparing the clock time, I'm estimating that the game is running at about a third of its normal speed.  Each Sim second takes three real-life seconds to pass.  This is progressively more annoying, and *any* help would be very much appreciated!

[Sunbee]

I'm going to ask a stupid sort of question: have you checked to see if something else is running in the background?  Because that sounds to me like something my computer (a laptop) would pull when it has run out of processing space.
I've been having various Sims 2 problems lately (vanishing start-up video, vanishing neighborhoods, grey screen with curser timer for several seconds, hidden neighborhoods sims not showing up in new neighborhoods) but I was due for an OS reinstall, and getting everything reinstalled fixed everything.

[thelovelylizzy]

Believe me, I will take any kind of question right now.  Thank you!

My virus scanner isn't running and I don't have anything else actively open.  Occasionally I'll have Firefox open, but I've been doing that on and off for a long time, not just as recently as this problem.  I'm not sure what else would be running, but I'll check into it.

[Nepheris]

How long have you let the game run through this slow motion problem? My game sometimes gets a lag that resembles what you're describing, and if I leave it to chew through whatever it is that's bothering the game for a minute, maybe two or three, it picks up again as if nothing happened.

[thelovelylizzy]

Yesterday I played two households for about half an hour each, and it didn't go away.

I removed the graphics drivers and reinstalled them just now, and the slow-motion is gone.  I guess I'll just have to reinstall them every time I play from now on, which is obnoxious, but at least it's something.

[Sunbee]

I was thinking more in terms of processes running in the background.  I've found google updaters to be particularly egregious about re-enabling themselves, but they aren't the only kind I've had trouble with.