@Sims2Christain
I avoid having the EA logo and startup movie play by renaming those movie files. Some people delete them, but I renamed them in case I ran into probems or I ever wanted them back. I've been running the game without the movies playing for more than 10 years now.
The intro movie file is intro_eng_audio.movie and is found in Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Movies if you are running the game from disk and Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Double Deluxe\Base\TSData\Res\Movies if you are running the Ultimate Collection.
The EA logo movie file is ealogo_audio.movie which is found in the TSData\Res\Movies folder of nearly every EP or SP.
You could cut out almost a minute of your load time by renaming those movie files.

So I decided to test my loading time. It's not scientific by any means, I only tried it once on each computer and without loading it before (if you exit the game and reload, times will be significantly faster).

Razer laptop
1. 55 seconds to load the game, 16 seconds to load a neighbourhood
2. Only some of my essential mods and default replacements, no object CC of any kind (39.3 MB total)
3. Intel i7-8750H @2.20GHz, 16GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 Max-Q, Windows 10

Desktop
1. 1min29s to load the game, 24 seconds to load a neighbourhood
2. 2.4GB worth of downloads
3. Intel i5-7400 @3.00GHz, 16GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050Ti, Windows 10

I will, I did remove them when I previously installed the game time before.

My game loads to main screen in 2:30, then hood menu in :30.

I press Enter the second the movie starts playing - it stops and the game starts loading.

I sometimes do the same -- if I'm really in a hurry. In fact pressing any key stops the video. But mostly I just let it play. As I said before, it's part of my routine for starting the game -- a ritual even. It gives me a little foretaste of the fun I'm about to have. And I even feel a little guilty if I stop it.

re run after compression of downloads folder.
26 minute wait for the title screen shortened to 3 mins. 3!
Now it loads in ~16 mins from click to lot instead of 38+.
I will have to run it a few more times to be sure it stays short but this is great!

By the way, you can compress files within neighborhoods, too-for instance, you can compress all the character and lot files-it might make a difference in your load times.
No, it does not corrupt any of them.
Plus you can (before running the game of course) run Mootilda's Hoodchecker to remove all the unnecessary memories that clutter up character files.

About 30 seconds once it starts, 15 seconds for the splash screen.
752 MB of CC
3.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX 5700, 8GB VRAM

I can't tell if my game is loading from my C drive or my D drive because the installations appear to have been merged at some point while trying to get it to work. The game only opens with the D drive shortcut, but it reads files from the C drive. Interestingly, the D drive is where most of the information dealing with actually running the game like the video card files are, but C drive is where I had to put my custom subhoods to get them to load. I'm a little scared to uninstall the C drive installation because I don't know how that will mess up my game.

I have the same problem. When I had the new computer set up, the files from the old drive (now on an external drive) are the ones that are being read, not the new files. Just keep them as they are. My main files are on the C drive and the external drive is where the game is reading it. I have no idea how that works, but I'm not going to mess with it. It took me about a month to get the game even half-way running, and if that's the way it is, it's gonna have to stay that way.

I've cut my load times down by making sure the files aren't nested too deeply. Instead of arranging things so the files are like this _ Downloads > Buy Mode > Surfaces > Tables > Buggybooz > Nooks and Niches (packages in this final folder), I made it so that the packages are nested one or two folders deep, at most.

I agree with omglo. Ever since I made my dl folder look like this







my game loads much faster. Anyway, my specs:

Win 7, 64
Intel i7, 2.5 GHz
16 GB RAM
NVidia GeForce GTX 980M
SSD

I've got about 20GB of cc, including music and movies and my loading time is about 15 min.

1) 5 minutes initially on my laptop first boot, 2nd boot, 1 minute
2) I use over 100 mods and I make my own CC
3) I don't give my specs out to anyone for fear of compromise and being tracked.

I highly doubt telling us what video card you use is going to get you tracked.

About file names-if you shorten file names, (internal and external) it does help the load times.
Remember-the computer is reading all the characters in those file names and processing them.
The longer the name, the longer the load time.
And having so many files is going to slow it down, too.