What to do if Your Game Slows Down (Clean Up Your Game)

[mtglady]

For Vista you should look under C:\Users\your name\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Screenshots.  Your screenshots will all appear here.  

Every simpack you install with the launcher puts a backup file in your DCBackup folder, so if you have not used the launcher to download anything then you will not have that folder.  That file is found here: C:\Users\your name\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\DCBackup.  You can delete the items in this folder with no harm if you find your game is slowing down.  Do not delete the DCCache if you have it.  

[samoht04]

Just realised that I had over 266 Items in my DCBackup! I obviously don't clear it out as often as I thought! 

[Frey]

I've found out I can really help my computer run the game much easier by shutting down every possible program or process. That includes antivirus too. Anyway, that obviously depends on how risky it is for you to turn your antivirus off, and that you should be offline while playing. Hope that helps if you don't think it's too dangerous for your computer.

And I'm trying PJ's advise right now so we'll see how that goes  . My Dynasty is running more slowly every day, so everything helps.

[Beddy_Boop]

I'm not sure if I should put this here or make a new thread but here it goes:
Is it safe to delete these files: C:\Users\laptop\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves
There seems to be all the families I've made since the game started...  :\

[mtglady]

I'm not sure if I should put this here or make a new thread but here it goes:
Is it safe to delete these files: C:\Users\laptop\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves
There seems to be all the families I've made since the game started...  :\

You can delete the items in that folder but first copy that file to somewhere else on your desktop, to a flash drive, external hard drive or something so that you will not lose those games if you wish to play them again.

Too many saves in that folder will slow your game down.  I generally move my older saves to my external hard drive and just keep the two most recent saves in that file. 

[Beddy_Boop]

Cool, I deleted about half of my saves and there were almost 400! No wonder it acted so slow!

[mtglady]

That was a lot of saves!  Good luck and I hope that helps speed up your game .

[GinaW1127]

Was looking for cheats and found this site. So glad I did. I didn't know I could delete that stuff. I have 2000 in the backup file. All gone now. The game ran fast as it was, can't wait to see how it does now 

[Leto85]

Was looking for cheats and found this site. So glad I did. I didn't know I could delete that stuff. I have 2000 in the backup file. All gone now. The game ran fast as it was, can't wait to see how it does now 

Welcome to the forum Gina. There is even much more to learn here about this game.

[niuri_cigarete]

I've tried locating the folder but it isn't there:


My game does run, I've tried restarting the PC, but the folder is still missing.
I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate and the game is fully patched. I've been wondering to reinstall the game which may fix some bugs in it, maybe that'll help the folder to appear.

[Leto85]

I've tried locating the folder but it isn't there:

My game does run, I've tried restarting the PC, but the folder is still missing.
I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate and the game is fully patched. I've been wondering to reinstall the game which may fix some bugs in it, maybe that'll help the folder to appear.

Ah, I see. You are in the My Documents folder. I also have Windows 7 but you have to look in the Program Files folder. My computer is disconnected at the moment, so I can't guide you straight through the folders if you can't see it yourself. But hopefully someone else can.

ATTENTION Windows 7 users, little help here!

[niuri_cigarete]

Actually, no need for help already. As I've said, I reinstalled the game and voilia! The folder is where it was supposed to be. That was weird...

[Chigatana]

Very nice discovery! My Sims 3 game now runs a bit faster.

I'd like to point out something. Don't confuse DCBackup with DCCache. If you delete the items in DCCache, all custom content in your game will disappear and you will have to reinstall everything again. It happened to me, not a good moment. :X

[Leto85]

Very nice discovery! My Sims 3 game now runs a bit faster.

I'd like to point out something. Don't confuse DCBackup with DCCache. If you delete the items in DCCache, all custom content in your game will disappear and you will have to reinstall everything again. It happened to me, not a good moment. :X

@RockinRobin: The above is very good info to add in your first post as a warning.
Thanks for the info Chigatana. Although it's said to read you had to learn this the hard way.

[Hosfac]

Another thing about cache files is that if you play in Riverview and/or Barnacle Bay, you might have world cache files too.  The path to those is Documents > Electronic Arts > Sims 3 > WorldCaches.  Not everyone will have this folder, so if you don't have it, don't worry about it.  It just means that your computer doesn't use these caches.  But if you do have that folder, everything in it is safe to delete.  You should have 2 files for each of the downloadable worlds you play.

When these get overloaded in my game, it's a major source of lag in Riverview and causes Barnacle Bay to freeze up entirely.  Lately, I make a habit of deleting these regularly, along with the 4 cache files in the main folder.  I didn't know about the DCBackup files, though so thanks!

Wow!  307 files in that folder.