All Game Sound Shuts Off

[Nalia]

I have this problem, too, which appeared just *after* installing Ambitions. It might be something wrong with the neighbourhood though, because the game is fully patched, and further testing --I sent one of the families to China-- the sound problem did not occur there at all, not even once. *shrug*

[Potato]

Right after I read this thread I also got the bug. So what did I do? I ignored it and continued my normal playing. But I have to say there have been only two situations like this. And also when the sound returns, it does have a deafening effect.
By posting this I probably jinxed it.

[Blech]

I haven't had the bug once since lowering sound quality and removing bikes. You might want to try that.

[Nalia]

Thanks, smellyarmando. I will give it a try next time and see if this stops the crashing -- although it does not happen every single time the sound problem appears.

EDIT: I tried it but it did not work for me.

[ElviraGoth]

Well, I don't have any bikes for my sims and I have the sound going out.  I lowered the sound quality and it helped, but didn't stop it entirely.

I have noticed when I have the task manager open on my second monitor that when the sound goes out, the CPU usage jumps from approx. 50-55% to 100% and stays there for awhile.  When the sound starts again, the usage drops back down.  I'm beginning to suspect a memory leak somewhere.

[uknortherner]

I had this sound drop-out (more like lag) issue last night, and unsurprisingly, going off what people have already said on here, I have an adult sim who rides a bike. However, I also noticed that at 3am when the game runs its usual 'hood maintenance, all the sound came back - as one huge cacophonic mess that lasted nearly a minute. Basically, it was every possible audio instance that should have played out throughout the day compressed into a minute of eardrum-destroying noise. After that, the audio behaved as normal.

I seem to recall this happening before, shortly after installing Ambitions, but I haven't really played the game properly for a while until last night.

It's just another entry in a long list of bugs that EA will sweep under the rug, along with the broken lights, the running glitch and countless others that I keep coming across but quickly forget.

[Entgleichen]

I lowered the sound quality and it helped, but didn't stop it entirely.

Did you lower sound quality to "Low" or "Middle"?

I have noticed when I have the task manager open on my second monitor that when the sound goes out, the CPU usage jumps from approx. 50-55% to 100% and stays there for awhile.  When the sound starts again, the usage drops back down.

Yea, that's what I've discovered, too.

[ElviraGoth]

Tried both.  Tried the middle setting first, then the low setting.  Still have sound shutting off.

Tried a couple of things last night.  I read where someone suggested changing the speaker options.  Mine are set at 2.0 basic speaker setup.  When I got to the game select screen, I tried changing it to 4. whatever and the game actually loaded faster.  Once the game was loaded, I changed it back to 2.0.  I didn't have sound problems right away like I have been, but they did start again.  So I changed to the 4.0, and the sound came back pretty fast, but cut out again.  I'm going to play around with it a little tonight and see if I can find a setting that works halfway decent.

I've also had some problems with my mouse.  Click on something and I get an unrelated pie chart or that the item is unselectable.  So I also was checking my video card settings to see if there was anything there.  There was a setting for advance frame rendering that said if there were problems with the mouse pointer to reduce the value.  So I did that, too. (After I had loaded the above-mentioned game.)

My thinking on the advance frame rendering was that maybe it was taking too much memory, but the setting is on the GPU, not the CPU.  It did help the mouse clicking, though.

[ethereal]

I was having the no-sound issue since the last Ambitions patch. Here is what a guru on ea forums yesterday told me to do and it actually worked for me.

Problem source link: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/257198.page

1. Click Start or press the Windows key and R, click Run, type msconfig, and then click OK.

2. Click on Startup.

3. Select disable All.

4. Click on Services.

5. Check the box that says Hide All Microsoft Services, then Disable All.

6. Apply, then restart your system.

Attempt to run the game. This will eliminate most of what might be interfering with TS3 running properly on a software level. Once you're done, repeat the above procedure, using the Enable All buttons to turn services and startup items back on.

-Big Guy-

I only tested it for 1 (human) game hour, but that was enough since it was cutting out on me around 15 minutes of gameplay. Hopefully, this will work for everyone that's having this issue. Moral of the story: Kill every startup/service that isn't Micro$ucks related before loading the game.

[morriganrant]

That is really fucking stupid, it sounds like something from EA, or alternately Microsoft. While yeah, it does reduce any possible conflict in a "raze it all" kind of way, most peoples computers do not reply on just their shit, and there is a lot of other useful things that don't come from either of them. Yeah, that is a really great idea! Tell all the sheeple to disable their virus scanners and other net security items, and not tell them they need to re-enable those! Unless you know what you are turning off, you probably shouldn't. What is a good idea? Open up msconfig and on occasion weed through it by hand, plus use of google if needed, and remove things that do not necessarily need to open at start-up. Same with services, not all are needed, some do shit you want to keep. You don't even need to just shut it all off like they are telling you to, you can just set the crap to manual in services.msc. Then they only open up when a program calls for that service. Note that Apples ipod services don't seem to agree with this tactic.
Just open up Windows Task Manager and end task anything you aren't using if the rest is beyond you. Most things that need to be running will pop back up and shit that you really shouldn't close will just restart the computer. Actually learn what those processes are.
That's great that that worked for you, but do you know what all you closed up? I bet that the majority of people that he gave that advice to have no idea.

[ElviraGoth]

No shit!  That was my thought, too.

It sounds like another way of saying, "EWE NEED MOAR RAMZ!"

Or it's an excuse for their lousy programming.

Either way, no thanks.  It's probably their spyware trying to phone home that's doing it.  When it can't do its job, it fills up your CPU and cuts out the sound.

Bleah.

[J. M. Pescado]

Killing "every" service sounds like you're killing those dodgy Sound Card Driver services that installs with your sound card, since TS3 doesn't run any such services. And yes, those unnecessary sound card programs probably DO cause grief.

[ethereal]

Killing "every" service sounds like you're killing those dodgy Sound Card Driver services that installs with your sound card, since TS3 doesn't run any such services. And yes, those unnecessary sound card programs probably DO cause grief.

Yes, and I should know better. The culprit was my creative xfi crap that I forgot to disable after updating.

[ElviraGoth]

Well, I found a couple of sims that were stuck.  One was out in her yard and couldn't move past the sculpting station for some reason, so I used resetsim on her. Another sim in the same household was at the hospital, (just visiting?) and when I tried to send her home, she wouldn't go.  When I zoomed in on her, she had a police cruiser (family vehicle) that kept trying to get around her.  I used resetsim on her, too, which sent her home, but the car was still trying to stick to her.  I deleted the car since there were two in that household and one of them was from a sim that had died.

Since then, I haven't had any sound problems to speak of.  Maybe once or twice for a second or two out of several hours of gameplay.

Hopefully, this fixed my sound problems.  Might be worthwhile just checking on sims in households you're not currently playing, just in case.

[rdogtpb]

I can definitely confirm this as well. Seems to happen with children riding personally owned bikes as well as adults. Sound goes wonky, game slows down to a crawl. if you save the game in this state, it stays in that bugged state. EA strikes again! I looked all over the web before I found this forum which actually addressed this issue. Not even EA's tech support forums have anything reporting this one. Note: If a kid rides the default npc-pool bike, this issue does not happen. Dunno so much about adults. I usually get them Kenspas for traveling around China for example. Issue doesn't seem to happen with Kenspas.

-Dog

[Nalia]

I updated the game three days ago. For the records, the sound problem seems to happen in a lesser degree after installing the latest patches. 

[Ellatrue]

Has anyone tried lowering the sound quality without doing anything to the bikes, and seeing if that helps?

[Blech]

Has anyone tried lowering the sound quality without doing anything to the bikes, and seeing if that helps?

I have and this just results in the bug occuring slightly less frequently than doing nothing at all, for me. It still seems to happen no matter what, but doing both (ditching bikes and lowering sound quality) lowers the frequency to tolerable levels. YMMV, though.

[bowrain]

So this problem is back in my game, and I don't have any bike in the lot. Happened on multiple neighborhoods so it's not the hood that is borked.

[Blech]

It's funny, I just had it come back in my game a few days ago, had to search for a solution, and the only one that worked was the one I posted, last year, right above yours. Lowering sound quality worked like a charm. You might also want to get twallan's Overwatch because it shuts off unused TV's and radios in your hood and this also seems to help in my game. I still get the bug but it's much rarer after taking those two steps.

[Versus]

I've only had this problem when there are too many bicycles going around in my neighborhood. Nuking the bikes always fixed the problem. Twoftmama made a mod to kill bike sounds here and it seems to be working wonderfully for me.

[SIMplyLisa]

Two Foot Mama has recently added a STFU for the Bicycle sounds. I might add that for me it is working wonderfully, I have bicycles all over the Map now, and no more Sound hangs. Note You can not get to this link unless you have a Crazy Town Account.

http://www.the-isz.com/theisz/index.php?/topic/6566-shut-the-flock-up-sound-effects-new-flavor-added-july-10-2011/