I am contemplating an upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11, and my main concern is the deep integration of OneDrive into the OS. What (if any) problems have you encountered running the game on Windows 11?

I looked for an existing thread and did not find one, but apologies in advance if I overlooked something.

My personal advice is to not upgrade to Windows 11. All the AI and stuff, you know? But that's just me. So if you do upgrade, here's some things that may help:
https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=hZEbQycsCu4 (Windows 11-specific guide. Don't worry about the link, it's just a Youtube video through Invidious, which is just a private Youtube frontend. No ads! )
https://www.belladovah.com/post/how...cs-enhancements
Happy simming!

What AI and stuff?

I just have never enabled OneDrive. I don't need it, I certainly don't want it messing up my Sims 2 folders and I don't think it offers anything useful to me, so I simply never enabled it.

Sims 2 UC runs perfectly fine for me on Windows 11.

I have it all: Windows 11, OneDrive, and Sims 2. Getting the game up and running on Windows 11 required only one tweak: completely disable My Documents folder from syncing and backing up to OneDrive (I keep everything in a folder on my Desktop). Consequently, I keep nothing in the Windows' Documents folder except for the EA Games folder. Everything works!

Staying on lower Windows versions to avoid "all the AI and stuff" could be dangerous. You get no updates (depending on how low a version you stay on), and knowing Microsoft, they'll probably abandon AI development soon enough, so you've nothing to worry about anyway. Same fate was with their AR development, 3D modeling, personal assistant Cortana, Windows Phone, anything really. They jump on the trends, pump a lot of money into it and then let it simmer down until ultimately abandoning the projects all together in favor of a newer, shinier trend. As for data collecting, any modern day company is notorious if you stare at the T&C long enough.

What AI development is Microsoft doing?

I think, not sure - that there's an option to send a query to the Bing AI chat straight from the Start menu.

I would just ignore that lol.

There are ways to turn off at least some of those functions (I turned off Cortana first thing on my Win10 computer).

You just want to make sure that before you install anything, you have set up the computer properly. Remove bloatware (if the Windows install comes with that - pre-install programs, games and similar), and turn off various stuff in the settings that you're not planning to use anyway (there's a lot of those). Also disable OneDrive before installing anything you care about (in some cases, updates have ended up re-installing it, but if it's just been disabled the settings seem to stick - haven't had any issues with it, at least).

There are also some "bloaty" tasks that run more frequently than necessary. I've had to permanently disable some of them over time - one kept slowing my computer to a crawl every time it ran, to the point where the computer more or less froze for 5-10 minutes. If you get any of that happening, check out what it is and if the task is necessary or not before stopping it (turned out to be some more Windows bloat).

Never had these issues with the older Windows versions... Can we have just regular old Windows 7 back, but supported and with basic security/etc. updates?

It's not worth upgrading to 11 for Sims 2 only. If you have real important software that requires it, then yeah, but 11 isn't worth the trouble for a 20-year old video game .

Have you heard of Copilot+ computers (built with AI-Integration) and the “Recall” feature? Here’s some articles:

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing...t-in-windows-11

https://www.techradar.com/computing...s-ive-ever-seen

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...-do-on-your-pc/

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...ge-privacy-risk

They apparently ended up delaying it because of the backlash it caused.

If anything, you’d probably want an older laptop or something just for older game, you know? But with some tweaking, the Sims 2 can run on many systems. Can’t say the same for the Sims 3 (bless her heart) or the Sims 4.

Oh yeah, OneDrive is a pain on Windows 10, too. Some things just never change. :\

Any luck yet?

I went from windows 7 to windows 11. Since I play on disc, had to get an external disc drive. Had to do LOTS of things, but works great

Nope, hadn't heard of any of that. Thanks for the articles.



I'm thankful that never using OneDrive seems to have stopped it doing anything on my computer.