well to tell the truth, ya also wana check for worms or bugs 2. Just 2 let u all no i have a 5 or 6 year old compaq, i no what u all are thinking and yes i do need a new pc but TS2 toot forever 2 load be4 but after a scan with ad aware and it usualy only takes 2-4 minutes to load. thats all i got.
and be4 u all ask i got
192mb ram
PIII
16 mb nvidia video card
98 SE
and it hardly runs chopy at all.
(and yes, i probly am asking to crash my pc)

oh and just to say, it dose run better on my friends "new" pc im just saying it runs fine on mine.

Well my issue is alos that I am running with a AMD athlon 1800+. That is my next upgrade

Nova-
Thats what I am hearing! but this is my 5th puter. I've had 3 gateways, and 1 emachines (Since 1998) I still have one gateway. The gateways were all good, but the emachine was awful. Next time I need a new machine, I will built it myself. I changed every part that broke for the last few years anyway. Compaq sent me the power supply a few times, and the rest made me send the whole machine in.
Sorry off Topic :-)

Loura sorry to hear you had problems with a emachine i have had mine for about a year and i love it. I have had friends with gateways and have tech problems and they do nothing but curse the day they bought it and the gateway tech help line is always its user fault or wipe the harddrive and reinstall everything.

I think maybe its just the different machines. My Emachine just kept breaking little things like the floppy drive, or the cd-rom, etc. Just over and over tho. I have a friend with a compaq who loves them. My uncle, and a good friend are both programmers at the local air force base and they use emachine computers and love them. So go figure.

Aks Elpres what the best specs would be for your PC

im actually haveing problems as well.I have a compaq X07 gaming computer (made in 2003 with top-of-the line graphics etc)and its running fairly slow.now i,of course cant go by more ram as i dont have ANY money to spare and im indebt already for an x-box,gamecube,ps2,SEVERAL games and a 119$ lightsaber replica all in all im up to 500$ in debt and need a solution.I run virus scan nightly (2 different versions:avg free and mcafee)and i defragmented this morning it takes up to 15 minutes to load the goth family :argh: sometimes!here are my specs if you need them

>Intel pentium 4 processor,
3.0 GHz,800MHz FSB with
hyper-threading technology
>NVIDIA Geforce fx 5950 ultra
graphics card with 256MB DDR
memory and AGP 8x support
>ASUS p4c800-E Deluxe Intel 875
chipset
>Hynix 512MB PC3200 DDR
SDRAM memory(2x256MB
module)2 available memory
sockets
>120GB Seagate Barracuda high-
capacity hard drive,serial ATA
7200 rpm and 8m cache

i got it from a local no-name shop who bought it whole sale since its discontinued i got it on March 16 2005 brand new and cant figure out whats making it run so slow,not that it matters i can deal with it but if theres a CHEAP (preferably free)souloution then id like to know befor night life comes out so i can fix it,on an off note,it runs doom3 on high just fine no lag whatsoever except for the loading times im sure ill figure it out but any help would be appreciated

JonSU, the first thing I'd recommend for you is more ram as soon as you have the extra money. It's fairly cheap to buy a 256 mb stick, if you're looking at trying upgrading. The rest sounds good and all I can suggest is cleaning up any duplicate downloads in your download folder (get the Clean Installer from this site to make it easy...I found buttloads of duplicates because of houses I installed that had custom content I already had in there) can help.

If your computer is running slow over all, you should definately check for spyware and run a good virus cleaner. I recommend AVG, (which you already have but for the sake of others I'm saying it again), which you can get for free. Go to http://www.google.com and search under the keywords "spybot" and "AVG" to find the free downloads (I don't have time to look up the sites myself and post them for you, sorry). Spybot is a decent free program that will keep your system clean of spyware, which will certainly slow it down if left unchecked. Also, go to http://www.trendmicro.com and run their free online virus scanner. Their scanner is updated on a daily basis and often catches worms, viruses and trojans that installed programs can miss.

If worse comes to worse, make back up copies of the files you want and reformat your hard drive, then reinstall windows and your programs. It won't cost you anything but time to do that and so long as you have backups of everything you want to keep, you should have minimum fuss.

Another thing: Always make a backup copy of your "my documents/EA Games" folder before installing any hacks or custom content you aren't sure about. That way if anything goes wrong you can replace the bad folder with the backup.

Hope that helps some.

Wow...I don't understand how some of you are having problems.... My computer is pretty weak compared to what you guys have...and I don't have excessive loading times or too much choppiness (I get it if I run the speed up).


My mobo, frankly, sucks. MSI...something. It sucks.

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47 GHz)
512MB RAM
GeForce 2 MX/MX 400 64MB video RAM
Onboard Sound
Windows XP

Updated drivers for everything. I turn off my antivirus, though I do tend to leave background tasks running (I don't like turning off the wrong thing like svchost and having it reboot on me)


I don't even run the graphical settings I should (which is everything minimum).... I can't stand low sim detail...I wish we could set high sim detail/low object detail but oh well. I generally keep the rest where it belongs, though I tend to allow things on lower floors to render on some homes. I have the Uni expansion, and I download custom content (but I'm careful about polygon counts).

However...my favorite lot size is 2x3. If you're willing to forgo landscaping, you can get some fairly spacious homes on those lots, but my preference is for small homes anyhow.

That might contribute.

Game runs fine for me, aside from sounds occasionally not playing, but that's minor and I chalk it up to the crappy onboard sound.







Oh! To the person whose power supply keeps breaking! One of the issues I have with my computer is that the power supply sits RIGHT ABOVE my processor! Fried something like 6 of the damned things within a month before saying screw it, and getting a more expensive power supply with a fan not only on the back, but also one on the bottom which blows air down out of the power supply (which means also across that processor, keeps the processor from being able to help fry it). This one's been running strong for 2 years now. You might want to consider the physical locations of your computer's components, when looking for what is happening with your power supplies.

I was able to half my load times by cleaning as much as I can out of my download directory, and putting as much non genetics in folders and clothing in the SavedSims folder. Delete anything that you can live without (I delete all eyeliner and rouge I find).

The biggest slow down on lots is having too many Sims on a lot. Also beware of objects with insane vertices or polygons counts.

Defrag your Hard drive (in XP right click the Drive -> Properties -> Tools -> Defrag, takes a few hours).

Diableing the hyperthreading technology helped not only Sims2 but everything on my pc run faster.

OMG.
Thankyou xylune .
I didn't realize excess doors and windows could make such a diference.
I just removed 5 windows and 9 unnessary doors to my Mansion, and it is actually running alot smoother!
Wow!
The Pauses (when the ghosts come out and scare someone , for example) are much less frequent and alot quicker now.
It's a haunted mansion that I downloaded. It still has about 15 doors left , but it is such a big improvement in gameplay. The pauses are slight now and much less!
I also removed some fencing that surrounded the lot.
Some of the doors that I removed were on angled walls , which the Sims hesitated to use much anyway. (they looked great, but I play with the walls partially down so I couldn't see them anyway.)
Guys, seriously ...Try it on the large houses. It really worked for me!

I'm glad it made a difference for you, Nick. I downloaded a lovely house on this site, but unfortunately, the entire upper floor walls are actually double glass doors, so even empty the house runs like crap. I had to delete all the doors and put walls in, which ruined the "modern" feel of the place...hehe.

Maybe someone will come up with a patch to improve game performance concerning windows/doors.

Nova.. Elpres is a bit intimidating. :-)

Thanks for the advice......as I said I wasn't sure if my source was 100% on this......your advice about using an up to date driver is useful.......I frequently check the NVIDIA site for updates.....anyway......since my last post I have doubled my RAM to 1Gig and find that my game runs alot smoother.......it still takes a while for the game to load, also lots, create a sim take their time........I have a HUGE downloads file so I expected that........the important thing is gameplay and graphics run much smoother.......the extra RAM is without a doubt the best option in my opinion........thanx for your imput your threads were good advice :D

I have a HP pavillio Amd Athlom (tm) xp2200+ 1.80 ghz 480 of ram.. so why is my game crappy?

how can i check my vido card... I kno u go to run and type something but wha i forgot!

back again i check everything heres my info mayb u guys can help me I have direct X :9.0c i think thats up dated processor : AMD Athlon (tm) XP 2200, MMx , 3D NOW ( whats that?) ans 1.8 GHZ but my game laggs alot.. i just did disk defrag last night didn't dl nothin else. could it be a virus? my graphic card is S3 Graphics Prosavage DDR ( is that good? Need help)

Are you sure it isn't something you've downloaded? My specs are lower than anybody's in this thread (Athlon processor equivalent to 1770 ghz, 512MB RAM and an unsupported 64MB graphics card) and I have no problems like this. I can have 30+ Sims on a lot with no slowing down whatsoever - the only time I notice any slowness is on lots with a high amount of custom objects on them. There is definitely a difference in lots that have a lot of custom content and lots that don't - I have some very large lots that are all Maxis objects that play amazingly fast, yet I can have a very small lot that's all custom content and it will play slower.

I've checked when I've been playing and I always have plenty of RAM spare, so I can't see that extra RAM is needed. I must admit though that before I got University I couldn't leave a lot and go to another lot without the game either taking forever or freezing. It's only since I installed Uni that I can go from lot to lot, use the Sim browser, go back to my desktop, visit a few websites, then continue playing for hours on end. Before Uni I could do none of these, I would have to leave the game and go back in after I'd been to two lots at the most. The difference is simply incredible.

Iono what it could be... some1 pls suggest something.. I hate this..

I only have 1 lot... So far i reinstalled everything for various reasons and deletedmy dl folder.. well actually the sims did t iono how.... but i do kno this...my sims wasnever as slow as they are now.. i put everything on high b/c i just wanted to see what it was like.. still lagg.... dunno what to do my dl is not as nearly asbig as it was b4... i just reinstalled it what last week...

Foxy1185, first slow down on all of the post and give people a chance to read and respond. It may take a few minutes, a few hours. Just be patient. Second please don't abbreviate your words, it just makes it harder for others to understand what you are trying to say.

With that said from the beginning what is your problem in full as best as you can describe what is happening.

I have a slow computer, so I expect my Sims 2 to run slow. I'm going to get some more ram for it, and changing from SD to DDR made a bit of a difference (my motherboard supports both).

I only have a 1.1GHz processor, and 384 mb ram, with a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 128mb graphics card. Once the game loads, it runs fine (although most of the settings are low :P) but it takes forever to load. Turning all the optional background processes doesn't help, and I only have 5 downloads in my downloads folder. No spy/adware, since I scan my computer every couple of days, and Defrag every week.

I think I need more ram :P

DLiverpool , if you have windows xpit takes over 100mbs ram, even after shutting everything you don't need down. What is left is what you run your game on. In my opinion, more ram will help your gameplay.

I have 768mbs ram and onboard graphics and my game plays fine. My settings are on medium and high. I seldom have lag, when I do this is usually due to custom content. I have high polly meshes, and use them sometimes without thinking. I have a horrible load time. Takes 15 minutes to reach neighborhood screen. This is due to having over 6 gigs of downloads in my game. It was worse before I upped my ram.

Teresa