Speed Up Your Game

Getting rid of the movies,
The movies are called ealogo_audio (the EA logo), and intro_eng_movie (the startup movie) and they can be found in the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Movies folder.You can delete either or both of them with no harm to the game.

Deleting you groups.cache file which can be found in MyDocuments/EAGames/TheSims2 can do wonders for speeding up your game. The next time you start The Sims 2, your game will regenerate this file as it comes when your game is new, and you will not lose any data. It can also get rid of a lot of bugs and glitches. Just to see how much this could help you, see how big your groups.cache file is. It will go to 14 kb when it re-generates itself. My file was 130 kb before I deleted it, and now my game runs TONS faster!

Defragment your drive regularly. Find the defragment tool at Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter.

In the game under the Graphics and Performance panels, turning off or down some of the options will improve your game speed, but not quality. Reflections, Screen Size, and Smooth Edges are the options that will affect your frame rate the most, followed by Shadows and Lighting.