I only have one family, but have played with them for several generations. I have all the second tier renovations and all of the "stuff".

My game "freezes" from time to time. Meaning that it "sticks" for a second or so and then resumes play. It seems to be growing more frequent.

I'm using Dell Inspiron that's only a few months old and am running Windows 7 RC.

Is anyone else having this problem?

The cause of what you're seeing is usually another application that is consuming a high percentage of system resources, particularly CPU, even if it's only momentary.

To keep from adversely affecting other programs on your computer, the game was designed to yield priority to any applications or processes that are running on the computer, even if they are background processes such as Windows system tasks or anti-virus protection processes. If there's a 'spike' in usage, the game may appear to halt momentarily as it yields resources to the application with higher priority.

Yeah it happens for me too, but only if I have other applications running besides the game. If I play the game and have nothing else open, I never have a problem

I've shut down everything else running the background except the virus protection and fire wall and CPU usage continues to spike while running the game (according to the task manager).

This is a little frustrating as I often run fairly resource intensive software in tandem with one another without any problems.

Perhaps it's a Windows 7 issue.

No I have vista and am using firefox. Its so annoying having to use task manager to close the game.
Also another glitch .
I dont use the games in full screen mode so I can do other things while it is running, but, it keeps jumping to full screen. grrrr

I'm using Vista, Firefox and sometimes IE; I run the game mostly in windowed mode for the same reasons as UKseniorlady. The game has never froze or jumped to full screen.

I have also noticed issues with Full Screen. I thought it was just me. Windowed mode is fine, but there is an issue with Full Screen.

I run xp, firefox and use full screen and had the same thing. I noticed it became more frequent the more upgrades and/or people I had in the house. Haven't tried windowed mode to see if that corrects it, but can also try giving the program a higher priority as well.