Game won't stop saving, please help D:

Jesse3092

So I've had the Sims since March 2013, and back then when I would play it 24/7 I never had one problem.

Then after a few months, my game started over heating more. I've dealt with that and just play the game next to a fan and don't cover vents on my computer.

But now I have a problem where I'll go to save the game and it'll just spin and spin and spin, and I always have to end the game and lose my progress.

I really hate it cause I really love this game and I want to play without any problems like I used to.

I've tried using just save instead of save and quit, and that worked a few times, but then the forever spinning save screen came up again. I'll try doing save as soon, I was just hoping there were other fixes.

I've read about people cleaning out stuff in their Sims 3 files and that helped, but I don't know what's safe to delete and what isn't, I get nervous with that type of stuff

Please help! I wanna enjoy this game again.

starzgirl1

Hi. You might be having a problem with too big a save file.

you could try doing a "save as" instead of a "save" and sometimes that will work.

or, sometimes what i have to do is move towns. it sucks but if you play too many generations the save file gets SUPER bloated and to clear it, you have to start from scratch

it might also be you have too much CC, so you might want to clear out some of that.

as for stuff you can delete, there's the cache files - delete these prior to starting your game, you can't delete while playing: CASpartcache, compositorcache, scriptcache, simcompositorcache, and socialcache. These can all be found under My Documents/Electronic Arts/Sims 3

You can also delete everything in DCBackup EXCEPT ccmerged unless you're big on uploading to the Exchange

If all else fails, a complete uninstall and reinstall should do the trick (although it would really suck)

Good luck

Karritz

Definitely clean your cache files. I try to remember to do it before I start playing each time. i don't always delete the socialcache, but I do delete the rest of them.

Also check if you've got enough free space on your C Drive. Sometimes the computer doesn't have enough memory to save and it just spins or gives an Error 12.

Jesse3092

I tried using save as today and it didn't work:/

Since I've lost way too much time on my current family I'm just going to make a new one.

I'm gonna get rid of all my custom content, since I've read here and a lot of other places that they can give you problems.

I'll start cleaning out all the files before I play too and see what happens.

I'm not the best at computers, but I think I found my C Drive, it says local disk (C:)and I have 583 GB free out of 671. I only got this laptop at Christmas, so it has a lot of storage left.

Also, if I end up having to completely uninstall and re-install, I just have a few questions with that. I know how to uninstall it, but what would happen to my Sims files in my documents when I uninstalled? Would they disappear, or be unusable when I re installed?

And would Origin be uninstalled as well? I got my download version of the Sims from the Sims website, so I needed Origin as well.

Also how would you re install it? Would I just go back to the Sims website and I could re install it?

Sorry for so many questions lol :XD:

PurpleRoses

Also, if I end up having to completely uninstall and re-install, I just have a few questions with that. I know how to uninstall it, but what would happen to my Sims files in my documents when I uninstalled? Would they disappear, or be unusable when I re installed?

You will want to back those up before uninstalling. Navigate to your game data folder (Documents>Electronic Arts>Sims 3), copy the entire Sims 3 folder, and paste it somewhere else like an external hard drive or just your desktop.

And would Origin be uninstalled as well? I got my download version of the Sims from the Sims website, so I needed Origin as well.

Also how would you re install it? Would I just go back to the Sims website and I could re install it?

Origin will not uninstall if you uninstall your Sims 3 game. They work separately from each other. If you ever needed to reinstall Origin, just go over to https://www.origin.com/ and redownload Origin from there. If you are talking about reinstalling your Sims game, you would just open up the Origin game manager, navigate to My Games, and reinstall from there.

Jesse3092

Thanks a lot to everybody

If clearing my caches and deleting my custom content doesn't work I'll just try and re-install the game

PurpleRoses

Jesse3092 wrote:

Thanks a lot to everybody

If clearing my caches and deleting my custom content doesn't work I'll just try and re-install the game

I'm not entirely sure what causes a game to not stop saving. It looks like you have plenty of room to save. It might also be a corrupt save. Have you tried any other saves? If so, you could always do the vanilla folder method and see if something in your folder is corrupt.

Jesse3092

I only had one game going, and it worked fine for awhile. While I had the file I moved to three different towns. I started in River View, then when the last update happened and we got Twin Brook I wanted to try that, but then I ran into the bookstore glitch and didn't try to fix it, so I moved to Sunset Valley, and that's when the saving started getting weird.

I don't know if it's because I moved so much, or had a big family or whatever.

But what's the vanilla folder method? I didn't know how to tell if a folder is corrupt or not. I looked it up but it looked confusing on a bunch of websites lol

PurpleRoses

I haven't used the moving feature yet, so I don't know if that could be a factor or not. It might very well be though.

As far as the bookstore glitch, it is actually a pretty easy fix:
http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2013/06/unroutable-rabbitholes.html

For the vanilla/clean folder method, see here:
http://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/06/tutorial-resetting-the-game-to-factory-settings-without-reinstalling.html

It is pretty easy. Just pull your Sims 3 folder to the desktop and then launch the game. It will create you a new, clean folder. You can start by testing a brand new save and try saving. If it works, you can take your save that you were having trouble with and put that back in. Test out that save. If it still has trouble saving, it could be too big or corrupt or something. If you still have a backup before your Sims moved around so much, you can go back to that. If not, to be honest I don't know if there would be more help for that. Maybe someone else could chime in with some sort of solution to reduce the size of a file if that could be the problem. If it does work after that though, you can go ahead and start moving your other folders from the old one into the new one.

Jesse3092

I started a fresh new file, and I wanna be in Twin Brook so I'll try the book store fix.

And I'll try out the vanilla folder method sometime soon to see if my old file was corrupt or too big or anything.

Thanks for the help

PurpleRoses

Can't say for sure if it will work or not, but I don't think it hurts to try.

Keeping my fingers crossed for you though!

SimsLover101mlp

HELP. I was on super speed then paused sims 4. Everything froze but the time continued to progress forward. Then I decided to save the game (stupid idea really) and now it is stuck saving and the time still continuing at a very fast pace. (not very good at wording this). It has been like his for almost 2 days. I cannot close/exit the game. I have no custom content and am not very good with computers. SEND HELP PLEASE.

igazor

SimsLover101mlp wrote: »

HELP. I was on super speed then paused sims 4. Everything froze but the time continued to progress forward. Then I decided to save the game (plum idea really) and now it is stuck saving and the time still continuing at a very fast pace. (not very good at wording this). It has been like his for almost 2 days. I cannot close/exit the game. I have no custom content and am not very good with computers. SEND HELP PLEASE.

Hi there. This is the TS3 section of the forum, you would want to have posted this in the TS4 section.

But if your game is stuck as you have described, the program needs to be force-quit from the Task Manager. The other way would be to hold the power button down on your computer until it forces itself to shut down and then restart it. There would be no way to recover the game from that condition.