Sudden Lag, Even in New Game

[Fuzzle139]

Mods: Overwatch
CC: A ton, mostly sims3pack files and about 20 or so package files
Expansions: All
Stuff Packs: None

Operating System: Windows 7
Graphics Card: Nvidia GTS 450
Processor: i3
RAM: 4GB
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Last night, my Sims 3 game was working perfectly. It didn't lag, there were no random freezes, it was smooth, the whole works. When I shut my computer down last night, Windows installed 2 new updates. Nothing else on my computer has changed.

When I loaded my game this morning, the main menu lagged a bit. I figured it was me seeing things, and started a new game in Sunset Valley. The town took the usual amount of time to load, about a minute or two. But once it did load and it began doing the sweep over the town, it was incredibly choppy and laggy. This continued into create a sim, with the game not responding well to the movements of my mouse and the random idle actions of the sims being extremely laggy. I let it sit for about ten minutes, seeing if letting it load everything would fix the issue. It didn't, obviously, or I wouldn't be here.

I've had this issue once before, and figured the drivers for my graphics card needed updating like they did previously. So I checked out the Nvidia site, and my drivers are up to date. I cleared my DCBackup folder, other than ccmerged. I also cleared out all the remnants of the save games I had long since deleted, since apparently they stick around. My computer was defragged and had a virus scan run on it last week, and I haven't downloaded anything since, nor has my antivirus (AVG) popped up with any notices about a virus.

Help?

[Angélique]

Have you tried deleting those five cache files too, CASPartCache and the rest, before you started the game? They're in the sims3 folder, but I guess you know that already.

Also, have you read Frey's horror story about AVG antivirus? It didn't meet her expectations, and that's putting it mildly.

I've experienced lagging and freezing in my game too, many times, and I'm sooo envious of those players who claim that they never have any problems at all with that.

[Frey]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of AVG right now but who knows, if the virus managed to block AVG it could have blocked other antivirus too, I guess. Maybe it's me being paranoid after all my mess, but I would run the antivirus anyway just in case.

Did you check if anything new was running in the background while you played? It could have been the antivirus or any other software downloading updates or something like that, using more RAM than normal. Now I'm using Microsoft Security Essentials and it works great with the game, except when updating.

This may be a stupid question but did you restart the computer to see if that helped? Or maybe reload the game?

[Fuzzle139]

Thanks for the help, both of you. =) I double-checked that nothing was running in the background, restarted my computer and deleted the cache files. It seems to have fixed the issue, and as a bonus I learned how to clear DCBackup and my game loads a lot faster now. I had something like 2000 files in there...

[Frey]

I'm glad you fixed it! 

[Angélique]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of AVG right now but who knows, if the virus managed to block AVG it could have blocked other antivirus too, I guess. Maybe it's me being paranoid after all my mess, but I would run the antivirus anyway just in case.

I don't think you're being paranoid, Frey. It's only natural to be a bit shaken and upset after having been the target of such a vicious virus and malware attack. It's my biggest fear, that some really nasty virus is going to overpower and deactivate my antivirus/security program, and after that be free to invade my poor computer, and ruin it for good . I really hope, and wish and (almost) pray that it's not going to happen, and I also really hope that you and your new antivirus program will win the battle against the evil intruders.