This thread is all about giving you the best performance possible without the need for you to upgrade your computer.
The advice given here is quite thorough and may seem daunting at first, and granted, it will take at least an hour or two to do everything, however you should see a good improvement in your computer's performance - and not just for games but everything you do with it.

The posts below are placed in a logical order. It's suggested you run through them one at a time in the order they are presented in. You don't have to complete them all, but you should try for the best performance gain.


Part 1. Removing adware / spyware from your machine
This is all about removing popup enducing rubbish from your machine, to free resources (make it faster)


Part 2. Scan Your Hard Drive For Errors
Very occasionally errors can happen on your drive. It's always best to solve
these to prevent future problems.


Part 3. Clear Out Your Temp Files / Freeing Disk Space
Clear out those files that are just taking up space.


Part 4. Upgrading Your Graphics Drivers
Up to date graphics drivers will give you better performance and better quality graphics (so long as your graphics card isn't too old). You can find the how-to-update guide here.


Part 5. Smoother Performance Via A New User Account
Creating a new user account is a great way to hopefully speed the game up. At the very least, it will make more memory available to the game, which is always good.


Part 6. Clean The CD/DVD
The cleaner the disc, the easier it is to read. The easier it is to read, the faster the game loads when you first run it. You can find the how-to-clean guide here.


Part 7. Defragmenting Your Hard Disk
Defragmenting is a method of organising all your files. End result: Your PC loads apps and games quicker.

Removing adware / spyware from your machine


The direct link to this post is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=826530
The direct link to this thread is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=35914


Explanation

adware and spyware is the name given to software that either delivers ads, "spies" on you, or gives you endless annoying search bars. Certain software applications such as some free screensavers install ad/spyware to sponsor themselves.

adware and spyware have many downsides:

• The most noticeable downside to adware is, well, ads start appearing. Some appear when you're casually surfing the net, others are more arrogant and appear at random intervals when you're doing other things.
  
• Your browser may become "hijacked". That means the homepage changes to one that is usually a meaningless portal of some sort. More aggressive adware will change back to this homepage no matter how much you try to change away from it.
  
• Some of the most common ad/spyware is search bars. Your screenspace quickly disappears under a mountain of them and a lot of searchbars are designed to sniff out commercial results.
  
• spyware is designed to do one thing: Spy. spyware apps send information such as sites you've visited (so you can be targeted with "specialist" adverts) to your email address (which is sold to spammers) all the way to your credit card details in some cases, to their home company.
  
• You can lose a lot of system performance, especially if you don't have a lot of memory to start with. Your processor gets tied down as different search bars fight for some sort of dominance. As popup windows spawn themselves more and more memory will disappear.

Microsoft is partly to blame for the appearance of this. Not for ad/spyware itself, just for not doing much to combat it. Anyone using Internet Explorer on any operating system below Windows XP Service Pack 2 is almost certainly vulnerable and the chances are, even if you've just reinstalled Windows, unless you have a firewall, you're infected with something. That is, unfortunately, a downside to the Internet and the fact Internet Explorer (pre XP SP2) is so happy to install.


How-to remove existing adware & spyware - short version

1. Add/Remove stuff that looks like junk. Don't be too specific or in-depth, Adaware will do most of the work.
   
2. Download Adaware from here.
   
3. Update definitions, run full system scan.
   
4. After that, periodically run smart scan.

How-to remove existing adware & spyware - detailed version

Warning

Whilst removing ad/spyware is beneficial to your computer, it may stop certain apps running.

There are 3 types of software: Commercial software that you pay for, freeware which is completely free, and ad-supported which is where companies pay the software developer to include their software.

If you've installed something that bundles ad/spyware, uninstalling the ad/spyware may make the program stop working. This is why Adaware keeps a quarantine. To be honest, If a program stops running I would suggest trying to find an alternative to the program that does the same job without the bundled ad/spyware.

Definitions

adware / spyware - computer clogging (usually) bad stuff
Adaware - One application that removes them. That extra "a" is cruicial to understand which I'm talking about at any time. (also, Adaware will always have a capital "A" whereas adware won't)


Step 1

First we'll go with the polite method.
Click the Start Menu & Control Panel. Then click Add or Remove Programs. Now, have a look through and see if there are things you don't recognise. Be very careful in what you choose, only remove stuff that looks obvious. For example, if you have a SearchNugget toolbar in Internet Explorer, then look for that in the list and remoev it. Adaware will take care of 90% of all adware/spyware so you don't need to be too indepth with this, it's just better to do a remove it politely if possible.


Step 2

The first thing you will need is an ad/spyware removal application. The most effective one I currently know of is Adaware (there are others but form what I gather they aren't as efficient). Click this link to go to the description page for Adaware, and click "Download Now" on that page to begin the download. 56k users, the download will take no more than 15 minutes.

After you've downloaded it go ahead and install it. It is completely free there is no bundled junk.
When you get to the end of the install, untick the bottom box. You can read the help file if you're curious but this page will tell you how to use the program so you don't really need to.

Click finish and from here Adaware will download it's update automatically and then open the main program and start scanning. This process will take a few minutes.


Step 3

After the scan has finished, you'll have a screen similar to this:




On this particular example, I have 215 "bad" objects. It's not uncommon for an average machine to have 500 or more.

Click Next and you'll see this:




That is showing you the different types of adware/spyware it's found in their individual groups. You can browse/read through if you wish however you will need to delete them. The easiest way to do this is by right clicking on any of the entries and clicking "Select All Objects":




After you have closed everything, click Next and OK to confirm. Everything will then be quarantined and deleted, which might take a minute or two. Once done you can close Adaware and that's your adware scan successfully done!
If you do find any apps that fail to load afterwards, such as ones that relied on adware/spyware, uninstall them!! Click the Start Menu and click Control Panel, then click Add or Remove Programs and uninstall those apps. After uninstalling them, reboot the machine and do another Adaware scan, just to make sure it's all cleared up.


Step 4 - future protection

Although the initial scan will get rid of most, if not all, adware/spyware on your PC, you still need to be protected for the future. Therefore, run the program frequently, say, once a week using the "smart scan mode" which won't take long.

Stay alert when you're surfing the web.
Some websites use popups that "magically cure your system". In reality these are either money making schemes (it tells you your system is on the verge of collapse but for the low price of $999.99, it can cure it) or bits of software that are infested with more junk than they claim to get rid of. Popups advertising anything should always be ignored.
Pre-Windows XP Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer was more than happy to install any old junk without even asking or telling you, and these adverts very often only lead to one of the above.

Spotting spyware can be quite easy but you have to be vigilant when you download software. Big software companies such as Microsoft or Adobe don't install ad/spyware however many smaller companies - such as independent screen saver producers - do. That's not to say all do by any means. It's just to say that some do so it can be best to stick to reputable download sites such as download.com because they refuse to host adware/spyware-bundled apps.
Another fantastic site is http://www.nonags.com which holds truly free software with absolutely no bundled junk.

Scan Your Hard Drive For Errors


The direct link to this post is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=826539
The direct link to this thread is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=35914


Explanation

Very occasionally, your hard drive is likely to recieve some sort of error in one of it's files. Generally it happens when the system doesn't shut down properly, e.g. during power loss. Sometimes it just happens for one reason or another, but you're never alerted to it.
The most common error is lost clusters, which is where data is found on the drive, but the index makes no mention of it. It's just spare data essentially. There are more extreme errors such as bad clusters, this is where a part of the drive is physically damaged either because it was jolted or because it had a defect when it was made.

What this page will do is show you how to scan the disk for errors, which will be automatically fixed. The procedure takes 3 or 4 minutes. It's actually very unlikely you'll have errors but it's better to make sure.


How-to scan your disk(s) - short version

For each hard drive, go into My Computer, right click the drive, click properties. Click the tools tab, and Check now. Click the auto fix errors box, click start, click ok.
After all drives have been told to scan, reboot and let it go.


How-to scan your disk(s) - detailed version

Step 1

The first thing you need to do is tell Windows to run the scan. Unfortunately, if there are errors, Windows can't fix them whilst Windows is running. Therefore you have to tell it you want a scan done, then reboot to actually do it. The scan will then take place during the Windows loading process.

What that means is you need to read this page through now because it will disappear as soon as you reboot.

To tell it to do a scan, firstly open up My Computer. Right click on the drive with (C next to it:




Click Properties. Don't worry if "Local Disk" isn't written next to it, that's just the name my hard drive has.

In the new window, click the Tools tab, highlighted in red, and the Check Now button, highlighted in blue.




This window will come up:




Click Start

You may also wish to tick the second box to scan for bad sectors. That will check to see if the disk has any physical damage but will take much longer (30-60 mins) however it should be done at least once a year (sometimes bad sectors are isolated, but sometimes they "spread", which means the heads that read/write data to the drive are damaging the drive. It's best to know a drive is failing before it does rather than after)

After clicking Start you will shown this window:




Click Yes and click OK to close the Properties window. The scan is now scheduled to happen next time you boot up the computer. The scan takes about 1-2 minutes.


Step 2

I would suggest reading through the rest of this document, then rebooting. The rest of the document will show what you can expect to see next time you boot up.

Next time you reboot you will get the Loading screen as usual, with Windows XP on it, and the green or blue bar scrolling across. You'll then be taken to a screen that looks a little like this:




This screen will give you the chance to abandon the scan. If you do abandon, it won't automatically run next time so you'll need to tell it to scan again.

If you let the scan run, it will run through 3 stages, and then give you a summary of the drive, and then reboot. It may repeat this on the second reboot. After that, it should boot into Windows without problem. It will keep you updated on it's progress as it goes and shouldn't take more than about 2 minutes. When it has finished you'll get a screen that looks similar to:




That's it! All errors will be fixed automatically and it will boot back into Windows when it's done.

Clear Out Your Temp Files / Freeing Disk Space


The direct link to this post is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=826543
The direct link to this thread is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=35914


Explanation

"Temporary files" is a collective term. Simply put, they are files that are supposed to be temporary and are generally safe to delete.

Unfortunately, the only way to truly get rid of them all is to painfully run through a set of folders and delete the files. However, this isn't made easy because some of those files may be in use at the time. Therefore we're just going to use Window's Disk Cleanup tool. It isn't 100% thorough, but it does do a pretty good job.

Additionally, this page will tell you how you can free some space on the disk.


How-to clean up your disk(s) - short version

Click the Start Menu... All Programs... Accessories... Disk Cleanup.
Run for each drive.


How-to clean up your disk(s) - detailed version

Step 1

Click the Start Menu... All Programs... Accessories... Disk Cleanup. If you have more than one drive, you will be greeted with something that looks like this:




Click OK. After clicking OK or if you only have one drive, you'll see a window like this:




This is where it's running through different things to figure out where it can free some space. The Compress old files section is generally where it will stay the longest.

When it's finished scanning, it will produce a screen similar to this:




And you can select which parts you want to delete. Different machine configurations may have different options.

Generally, it's safe to tick everything. Disk Cleanup has been designed with a certain amount of leeway installed, so that you can't delete files that are critical to the system. The only one you may wish to be cautious about is the Recycle Bin... When you delete a file, it goes into the Recycle Bin where you can restore it or delete it permanently. Sometimes people delete files and then realise they need them back. Click the Recycle Bin option, then Click View Files and make sure that you have actually finished with the files in there.

Once you've ticked everything you want to, do not click OK yet.


Step 2

Click the More Options tab and you'll be shown this:




Firstly click the Clean up button circled in blue. What it will do is remove all system restore points, except the most recent. If your system is running perfectly (i.e. doesn't crash) and has been for a week, it's perfectly safe to click Yes and do this. Otherwise, it may be wiser to click No

Now click the Clean up button circled in Red. That will bring up the Add/Remove box which looks something like the one below:




What you can do is remove applications and games that you haven't used in a long time. In the top right you can re-order that box to show how often you use an app, when you last used it, (the dates are unrealiable in some cases because of the way some apps/games are handled) by size or alphabetically. Remember that uninstalling any app/game here will completely remove it from the system so make sure that anyone else who uses the computer won't need it either.

If you choose to uninstall anything, and you recieve a box asking you to restart the computer, say No and continue. Reboot will come later.


Step 3

Close the Add/Remove window and click OK in the previous window, then Yes to confirm.

And that's it! Your temporary files are at least less than they were, which will free up disk space.

If you were asked to reboot during any uninstalls you did, now is the time to reboot.

Smoother Performance Via A New User Account


The direct link to this post is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=826560
The direct link to this thread is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=35914


Explanation

There are several things you can do to make the game run a lot smoother and better without buying any upgrades. This guide can really apply to any game you have.

What we're going to do is create a new user, then take all the processing overhead out of that user. After that we'll tell Windows to give the game higher priority than most other processes, which means the game gets almost all of your computer's power - which means better and smoother gameplay, hopefully.


Credit

Thanks to Sophie B, of ESI (it's a business), for the idea of de-theming Windows, dropping the number of colours, and removing the screensaver.. and also for prompting me to write this page.


Notes

This is only designed for Windows XP. If you have Windows 2000, ME or 98, they don't take a lot of processor overhead so it would be pointless anyway.

This page assumes you've already got Sims 2 installed on your PC.
This page also assumes you've installed the game to the default directory. If you haven't, surf to the appropriate directory in Step 3.

You will need to print this document (using Internet Explorer, Firefox doesn't split the graphics properly), or view it on a second machine, because part of making a new user account means logging off and thus closing this browser window.


Smooth up your performance - short version

Make a new admin user account.
Login as that account. Switch to Windows classic theme, remove all the Windows effects, screensaver off, 15/16bit colour.
Make a new batch file, with this command in it:
cmd /c start /AboveNormal [sims 2 latest expansion exe name]
Save file as sims2.bat in the TSBin directory of your latest EP. Make a shortcut to that batch file. Run game via it.


Smooth up your performance - detailed version

Step 1

The first thing we're going to do is create a new user on the machine. You will need admin rights to do this.

Click on the Start Menu and Control Panel. You will see a window something like the one below:




If it does, click User Accounts, circled in lime. If you have the classic view (white background, lots of icons, look towards the bottom and double click "User Accounts".

You'll now see something similar to the following:



Click on "Create a new account", circled in lime.

Give the account a name, such as "Games" or "Sims" - it doesn't really matter what you call it - and click Next

Make sure the "Computer administrator" option is clicked and click Create account.

The new account will be created and you'll be taken back to the previous screen.

Close the User Accounts and Control Panel windows.
Then click the Start Menu and Log Off:



And click the Log Off button.


Your new account will be on the login screen now, click on it. It may take a little while to load on the first run.

Note: You should not run the game at this point, for reasons that will be explained later.


Step 2

The first thing that needs doing with the new account is to trim all the settings down.

Right click on an empty part of the desktop and click Properties:




In the following window, click the Theme drop down (the bit with the red line) and click 'Windows Classic':




Then click on the Screen Saver tab, change the screen saver to '(None)' by clicking the dropdown box (red). This will disable the screensaver only on this games/sims account.




Finally, click the Settings tab and change the color quality to 16 bit (if 15-bit is listed, click that):




Click OK and after a few seconds, the screen will completely change into the classic style.


Now we're going to turn all the visual styles off.

Click the Start Menu and right-click on My Computer, then click Properties:




Click the Advanced tab and then the topmost Settings button:




Click the 'Adjust for best performance' option:




Then OK and OK again.

Windows will now look pretty bare, but this is good because it won't have to worry about displaying stuff. You may notice that it's more responsive too.


Step 3

We're now going to create a new shortcut to run the game.

Open Notepad, which is located in the Start Menu, All Programs, Accessories.


This is different dependant on which expansion you have, you need to follow the instructions for the latest expansion pack you have.


No expansions: In notepad, type the following: cmd /c start /AboveNormal Sims2.exe

University: In notepad, type the following: cmd /c start /AboveNormal Sims2EP1.exe

Nightlife: In notepad, type the following: cmd /c start /AboveNormal Sims2EP2.exe

Open For Business: In notepad, type the following: cmd /c start /AboveNormal Sims2EP3.exe

Family Fun Stuff: In notepad, type the following: cmd /c start /AboveNormal Sims2SP1.exe

Glamour Life Stuff: In notepad, type the following: cmd /c start /AboveNormal Sims2SP2.exe

Pets: In notepad, type the following: cmd /c start /AboveNormal Sims2EP4.exe Thanks MarnieBear!

Click File... Save.

At the top it will say 'Save in:'. Click the dropdown (with the red mark across it) and click the one with C: in it:




Now double click Program Files, and EA Games, then the folder of the latest expansion you have, then TSBin.

In the file name entry near the bottom, type in "sims2.bat" (including the quotes):




Click Save. Close Notepad.

Now we just need to create a shortcut to those files. Right click on an empty part of the Desktop and click New... then Shortcut:



In the new window, click Browse...

Click the + next to:
My Computer
C:
Program Files
EA Games

and then the folder of the latest expansion pack you have, and then TSBin.
Finally, click the sims2 that has this icon next to it: and click OK.


(note this image has deliberately had several files "removed" from it to save space)


Your window should now look something like the one below:




Click Next then give it a name, e.g. Sims 2, and click Finish

What this does is launches the game with "Above Normal" priority, which means Windows gives it slightly more attention than other apps.. which basically means it should run slight smoother and may even load a little quicker, in addition to steps 1 and 2.

Unfortunately, this method cannot be used to put the game into Windowed Mode.


Step 4


With the tweaking done, you now need to copy your Sims saved files from your old user account to this one.

Click the Start Menu and click My Computer. Double click the entry with (C in it. and double click on 'Documents and Settings' (Note: if you've moved the location of My Documents, you need to go to the place where you put it)

You'll see a list of the users of the computer.
Double click the name you normally log on with, and double click on [name] Documents.

Double click on 'EA Games' and right click on 'The Sims 2' then click on Cut:




Now close that window, click on the Start Menu and click My Documents. Click on File.. New.. Folder:




Type EA Games as the folder name, then double click it.
Click on Edit... Paste.


The saved games will now be transferred to the gaming account. This should happen pretty much instantly, unless you have My Documents stored on another drive in which case it will take a minute or two.



That's it! Your new account is all set up and trimmed down so it should provide better game performance, you may even be able to nudge the graphics quality up a bit.

One thing to note is that all downloads will now go into the Downloads folder on the new account, and not into the old account's one.

To play the game, simply log on to the Gaming account and run the shortcut you made on the Desktop.

Defragmenting Your Hard Disk


The direct link to this post is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=826563
The direct link to this thread is https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=35914


Explanation

Short version: Defragmenting your hard drive means all the files on the drive are pushed to the start of the drive and de-fragmented.

Long version: When you save a file to your hard drive what happens is a little chunk of the drive is allocated to this file.
Now, lets say you save 3 files, each of them 1,000,000 characters long.
So you have file A at the start, file B after it and file C after that. Now lets say you delete file B, what you have is file A at the start, a gap of 1,000,000 characters, and file C at the end. If you then save a file that is 1,500,000 characters long, the first 1,000,000 will go into the gap file B used to be in, and the other 500,000 will go after file C. That would be a fragmented file because it's in two blocks.

Disk defragmenter rounds up all the fragments of each file and puts it into one long block. Think of it as reading a book. If the pages were in 1, 2, 3... order it would be easy to read, but if they were in random order 1, 57, 31, 6, 3, 62... then you would read one page then have to search for the next one. That's what a hard drive has to do with fragmented files. Disk Defragmenter puts the pages in order.

The distinct advantage of this is it takes a lot less time to read a file with 1 fragment than with 100 fragments so as you can imagine, if you have a lot of fragmented files it will take a lot longer to work with them. Windows should boot a little faster, games, especially big games like The Sims 2, should load quicker too.


Defragmenting

Click the Start Menu... All Programs... Accessories... System Tools... Disk Defragmenter.

Click the Defrag button.

That's it! If it's the first time you've defragmented it will take a while, possibly upwards of an hour. Subsequent defrags shouldn't take too long and defrag should generally be run weekly.