Sims 3 - Freezing every few seconds...

Now I know this is probably not the most technical post to start with but I am quite proud I found the answer to the problem.

My wife, an avid fan of the Sims 3, doesn't do technology and when something doesn't work it takes all of 5 minutes before it is removed from her sight and something else takes it's place.

So when the Sims 3 stopped working as normal I was keen to get it going again as she does like it and I find game issues a real challenge compared some of the more mundane problems I have to solve each day. 



I Googlewhacked the string "Sims 3 freezing" and to my very pleased eyes there were hundreds of other people with the same issue.  There were quite a lot of suggestions from renaming back up save files to running command line options. 

I tried the save game rename by going into Documents\EA\Sims 3\Saves (something like that) and renaming the current save folder with the .old on the end and then removing the .backup off the backup folder to put it in play.  Alas it didn't work.

I had to scroll through several pages of Google hits to find one forum post where someone mentioned the resetsim command.  There were a few people who had done this and it worked but my wife had tried it and it didn't fix it.  The difference was resetsim has a /all command which will reset EVERY sim in the game - resetsim * - tried this one and it has fixed it.  She had to do it twice in total as it starting freezing but it does appear to cure the issue.

So next time your Sims get frozen in time remember the following:

CTRL+ALT+C to open a console
type resetsim *

And all your Sims will be free from the black hole that has magically appeared to stop them moving properly.  Life in IT can help with these problems sometimes...