[SOLVED] game is running WAY too slow, unplayable for a year

[ceviche]

hi! i'm making this post bc i want to help my friend who's having this terrible issue with his game, but is really busy to post a thread on his own at the moment! he loves playing stardew during his free time and has been trying to solve this for about a year now with no success.
his game is unmodded. his pc has 8gb RAM and i5 cpu, the game used to run just fine until one day it didn't.

he wrote me a list of issues:
- game takes too long to launch after hitting play on steam;
- lags on menu and character creation;
- when opening his saved games menu, the game window stops responding for a few minutes;
- after finally opening a save file, the game takes around 30 minutes to load (it stays in the black "[Loading...]" screen for 30 mins);
- when playing, he deals with a lot of stuttering too: just walking around the map causes the game to suddenly freeze while still running somehow, so he loses around 20-60 in-game minutes bc of that and he never has enough time to do what he normally could in a full in-game day. it lags when watering plants, fishing, mining (so basically everything). he says it's impossible to mine and fish since these tasks need quick action;
- when entering/leaving indoors or going from one area of the map to another, the game freezes in the loading screen and takes a good while to load.

he tried a lot of suggested solutions he saw on reddit and the official forum, which i'll list below bc unfortunately none worked:
- resetting his pc;
- doing a fresh download of stardew valley;
- deleted startup preferences;
- updated his gpu drivers;
- played 100% vanilla;
- launched with smapi but no mods;
- launched with smapi with 2 mods;
- set compatibility mode to windows 8;
- set steam compatibility mode to 32bits (this one did ease the loading time a tiny bit, but it doesn't let him play with mods or friends so he basically can't do the stuff he's most interested in);
- updated XNA;
- checked task manager for cpu and gpu usage (the %s are totally okay, not even near 100% of anything. the game was supposed to run fine);
- set high priority for stardew valley;
- tried the windows troubleshooter;
- tried to play both windowed and full screen;
- he also tried all of the above with no interference of an antivirus.

please help!!

[DromedarySpitz]

does he run a 32 bit or 64 bit OS? and what version of windows does he have? 8GB doesnt seem like much if his system ends up using most of it.

[Elichan]

Hello! I had the same problem, but I was able to fix it!
In my case, I needed to update DirectX. Now, Stardew Valley needs DirecX 10. Then, restart PC and done!

Let me know if it worked!

PS: Sorry for my English

[xaviersxmen]

I have a really bad comp and it plays fine.

[ceviche]

Originally posted by DromedarySpitz:

does he run a 32 bit or 64 bit OS? and what version of windows does he have? 8GB doesnt seem like much if his system ends up using most of it.

windows 10 64 bit, sorry forgot to mention. but it's not like stardew valley takes too much to be able to run, and his pc used to be able to run it just fine, until one day it didn't... he's able to play games like genshin impact just fine, the issue is only with stardew valley for some reason :/

[RenardEffrayant]

I found this. Not sure if it applies and I can't find the setting this person is talking about but maybe it will help?? It was two years ago but describes a similar issue.

https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/help-my-game-is-going-very-slow.11437/

[Tannhauser]

If all else fails, and if he really wants to play SDV enough to go for this, then there is always the nuclear option: backup any important data and then reinstall Windows, wiping the hard drive in the process.

[ceviche]

Originally posted by Elichan:

Hello! I had the same problem, but I was able to fix it!
In my case, I needed to update DirectX. Now, Stardew Valley needs DirecX 10. Then, restart PC and done!

Let me know if it worked!

PS: Sorry for my English

hi! thank you for the suggestion bc it actually gave me hope! unfortunately, today he tried this but it didnt work either :( we dont know what to do anymore

[ceviche]

Originally posted by Tannhauser:

If all else fails, and if he really wants to play SDV enough to go for this, then there is always the nuclear option: backup any important data and then reinstall Windows, wiping the hard drive in the process.

well yeah, i mentioned in the post he already did that. didnt work :/

[ceviche]

Originally posted by RenardEffrayant:

I found this. Not sure if it applies and I can't find the setting this person is talking about but maybe it will help?? It was two years ago but describes a similar issue.

https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/help-my-game-is-going-very-slow.11437/

oh he saw that post too! i also sent it to him a few months ago but nothing worked. so frustrating :(

[BirbNotBird]

Have you updated .NET framework? I don't know much since I'm not a coder, but let take guess and let hope that work.

[ceviche]

UPDATE:

we finally figured it out! here's the solution for anyone curious or going through a similar situation:
- my friend downloaded every Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables version from 2005 to 2015. turns out he didn't have all of those in his pc, and you can just get them in the official microsoft website;
- he then downloaded Swiftshader 3.0 Modified, which are just two files named d3d9.dll and Swiftshader that you need to put in the folder located at C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/assembly/GAC_32/Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics/v4.0_4.0.0.0__842cf8be1de50553;
- he also restarted the pc a lot during this process to make sure everything was running in his system.

and THAT WAS IT!!! the game now runs normally and launches in less than a minute! he's really really happy this is finally over, you have no idea. i had to try and help him more directly because he had already lost hope, but i wasn't buying it. it's his favourite game, he can't not play it bc of some dumb software issue to run a 2D game!
thank you to everyone who suggested solutions in this thread! although those didn't fix my friend's problem, it can help other people with similar issues in the future. and if all else fails, try these three simple steps i mentioned above! cheers :]

[Pixie]

Originally posted by ceviche:

UPDATE:

we finally figured it out! here's the solution for anyone curious or going through a similar
- he then downloaded Swiftshader 3.0 Modified, which are just two files named d3d9.dll and Swiftshader that you need to put in the folder located at C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/assembly/GAC_32/Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics/v4.0_4.0.0.0__842cf8be1de50553;
- he also restarted the pc a lot during this process to make sure everything was running in his system.

Can you tell me where you were able to get the Swiftshader 3.0 Modified files? I thought I had found a site that had the files you mentioned.

The trouble occurred in the literal last step, moving the files into the v4.0 file. I was able to move a compressed zip file in, but when I attempted to extract the files I was denied - even though I am trying to put the files on my own computer.

[Mharr]

You'd need to extract the files somewhere unprotected before moving or run your extractor program with admin rights.

[Dnepr]

I fixed it by this way, but after restarting it still took so long to start. I noticed that it itself deleted the "Swiftshader 3.0 Modified" files, but after I returned them again the problem was not solved.