My loading time has slowed. Is it because of CC?

Also took 3 times for my disc to load and it wasn't throwing up error messages. Just wouldn't load.

Is it the disc, or my drive? Or too much CC?

How much cc do you have? Have you run the hack conflict detection utility from paladin's place to check for conflicts?

Another method would be to try a no cd patch but I'm always hesitant to recommend that to people as a first test.

Might be the disk - did you try cleaning it (carefully with lint-free cloth)?

I will try cleaning it and I have 16K+ objects in my file folder. 4.81 gigs.

I do not want the no disc patch. That looks just scary, although I am always worried my disc will break which will mean I lose M&G and would have to downgrade to AL.

I'm fairly certain I have no mod conflicts. Any mod I download I always make sure I have no conflicts or I uninstall old one. I just did that with a Humble mod.

Have you run the tool though? I'm pretty good with checking for compatibility, but the most unexpected mods crop up on the HCDU from time to time.

You can find the tool in question here: http://www.simwardrobe.com/ Click on TS2 on the left, click on the Programs link, and download the Sims 2 Hack Conflict Detection Utility.

Something else that might be affecting it would be if you managed to accidentally get a Sims 3 or 4 file in there. They are all .package files, so the game will happily try to open them, but it can't make any sense out of them.

I understand that you are careful. But accidents happen, especially if you find yourself accidentally looking at Sims 4 instead of Sims 2. And it only takes one "alien" file to cause a slowdown.

Could also be you need to delete the cache files. They can get corrupted from adding or moving CC around, and can stop the game from running.

The more cc you add the slower your loading time is. My old sims 2 folder with 20 Gigs took an hour to load, this one with 10 Gigs takes about 10 minutes.
You can help loading time by not going deeply with sub folders and by removing special characters like brackets. The game must slow down to read every special character in your download folder.

That's a good point, Jo. I always rename my files to remove special characters. I use a free program, AdvancedRenamer.

Special characters refer to anything other than dashes and underscores. I'd be wary to even include numbers and spaces.

Something like this takes forever to read:
Blue Azure Recolor [~Creator Is Awesome~] RugRecolorName--Maxis+Match.package
Could be condensed:
CreatorIsAwesome-rug-blue.package

I go a step further and make a folder for creators I have lots of CC from. So if example, I download a lot of toilet recolors from Jo, I make a Jo folder in my Downloads folder. And remove the creator name from the files all together.

I don't know about Sims 4 packages, but Sims 3 packages stop the game from loading completely. I don't know how it happened, but somehow my unzipping program got set up to put unzipped files into the Sims 2 Downloads folder into the normal Windows Downloads folder. When I unzipped several Sims 3 mods I didn't realize that they had been unzipped to my Sims 2 Downloads folder and when I tried to play Sims 2 it refused to load. I took the Sims 3 packages out, and it loaded normally.

I'm saying this because of the post above about Sims 3 and Sims 4 packages accidentally being in the Sims 2 folder slows the game down. No, it completely stops loading since the game doesn't know what to do with it.

Gaps I am pretty certain are special characters and I've never been sure about dashers, I always use underscors or if a name is long I capitalize every new word and push it together. BlueAzureRecolorByAwesomeRugMaxisMatch.package

Some creators I shorten such as HW is Honeywell.

I shorten Maxis Match to MM, Default Replacements to _DR at the end of the filename, Honeywell to HW, Boiling Oil to BO, etc etc.

oh I see...thanks guys! I will look into all of this.

And ten minutes?! Nah, mine is maybe 5 or so...but I won't freak so badly anymore if that's the case. I have added a bit more than my game was used to. I was using 6k+ and now I have 10k more...darn recolors and Plumb Bob Keep

Just wanted to make sure it isn't my disc. That is most important to me...

I did delete my cache...that helped

@siletka that mod conflict program keeps crashing on me

The mod conflict program was never updated, so it only recognizes one path: Documents->EA Games->Sims 2->Downloads If you have your mods in another folder, it cannot find those mods. You must create folders inside your EA Games folder to make the path EA Games->Sims 2->Downloads and then put the mods in those folders for the program find the mods and detect if there are any conflicts.

5 minutes with 10K is really good.