Freezing

Hey there,

I've been having this problem for awhile, where my Sims and everything freezes up, but animations such as the plumbob, a ringing phone, or fish swimming remain moving as per usual. Time stops for the duration of the freeze, but it's never a complete freeze, and my game never crashes. Sometimes these freezes don't last long, or they come in patches (as in, it will freeze for a few minutes, go again for a few seconds, freeze again, unfreeze, and so on and so forth).

I've read through many pages of the forums here as well on other sites, here I haven't encountered the same exact problem (apologies if I did just miss it), and on other forums it's a well known problem but no fix. The only thing I've seen as far as a solution goes is that it may be related to Townies getting stuck around town due to a routing issue, and "ResetSim *" may work, but it doesn't for me, and it's been well established it's nothing to do with actual computer capabilities.

There's also no common theme with what my Sims are doing when this occurs, where I am in the neighbourhood, how long I've been playing, or anything else I can detect. I've tried changing families, restarting my game and computer (has been an ongoing problem for quite some time, so this has happened countless times).

My game is fully updated (1.48.5), and I've done the Ultimate Fix posted here to no avail. Running on Windows 7, with the base game, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Seasons, and Showtime. No mods or custom content whatsoever.

The problem isn't getting any better or worse with time, and while I've encountered and overlooked a LOT of glitches with Sims 3, this one is a real game breaker for me, which is a pity as I've loved The Sims since the original when I started playing 11 years ago. Any suggestions or known patches would be hugely appreciated!