Some things just doesn't show up!

[elinakene]

Hello, I have a problem.. My Sims 2 is suddenly started to lost things? I actually don't know, how to spell it, I deleted all my custom content & tried to re-install my game. (base game; University, Nightlife and Apartment Life) I installed Sims 2 probably 2 or 3 months ago, and then uninstalled it, bec I didn't used it. And then I installed game again (bout 1 month ago) it worked perfectly, until all custom content started to ''miss''. +I have the newest drivers for my computer and Sims 3 runs perfectly. (But I actually like 2 more so I'd be very happy, if I can fix this problem:)) My computer runs on Windows 7.

Some pictures too:
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/1-27.png
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/2-24.png
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/3-19.png
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/5-15.png
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/6-15.png
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/7-15.png
One big pic (http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/4-16.png)

Some pics of Sims 3 & 2 in game, to show my graphics.
Sims 3 (http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/6-12.png)
Sims 3 (http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/7-12.png)
Sims 3 (http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/2-18.png)

Sims 2 (http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/rockocco.png)
Sims 2 (http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/chill.png)
Sims 2 (http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/minnie-mousse/close.png)

And finally information of my computer:
Microprocessor 1.8 GHz AMD Dual-Core E2-3000M APU with Radeon HD 6380G Dual Graphics
Microprocessor Cache 1 MB L2 cache
Memory 4 GB DDR3
Video Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6380G Dual GPU (up to 1.98 GB)
Hard Drive 500 GB SATA (5400 rpm)

I'm really sorry for long post, and I hope I can, somehow fix this thing. Thank You :)

[Darby]

Processor is pretty slow, but more importantly, that graphics chip absolutely cannot handle Sims 2, period. You run a great risk of burning out the chip, and possibly damaging the motherboard as well trying to run the game on this machine.

Important reading: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Onboard_Graphics

[Bwinney43]

Processor is pretty slow, but more importantly, that graphics chip absolutely cannot handle Sims 2, period. You run a great risk of burning out the chip, and possibly damaging the motherboard as well trying to run the game on this machine.

Important reading: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Onboard_Graphics

Agreed. A lot of people don't understand(most just flat out don't know) that running the game on a low end machine will eventually catch up with you in a bad way.

[punkrockgoth1988]

Agreed. A lot of people don't understand(most just flat out don't know) that running the game on a low end machine will eventually catch up with you in a bad way.

:( I've seen much weaker systems run the game well, only to die while the only thing running was Windows Media Player. Not quite sure if it was due to playing TS2 in the first place or an existing issue with the power jack...

Rule of thumb, if you wanna play games, get a desktop machine or spend lots of extra cash on a gaming laptop.

[AlexandraSpears]

I once ran Sims 2 and all EPs on Windows Vista with 2 GB of RAM. Boy did it lag.

Running it on Windows 7 with 2 GB--significant improvement.

You know, the motherboard on my old computer got fried...but then again, we'd had thunderstorms and the power had flickered several times right around the time it died.

[elinakene]

Okay, thank You all very much!:) Atleast, now I know the problem.

[kjd73170]

I used to see items disappear when using an Intel GMA GPU. Since going to a Nvidia GPU no issues viewing items.

[Firelira78]

Just a question/speculation.

Do you have at least 2.5 GB space in the drive partition where you have your "My Documents"? Did you ever get a message, "The Sims 2 may not work properly as you don't have enough space, do you wish to continue anyway" and click "Yes" on it?

I remember a similar problem I had just after installing Apartment Life. When I loaded my neighborhood, many of the houses didn't have the family picture. Tara Kat's family had just "The Family" in the title. In the family description, Sanjay Ramaswami was shown to have "Grow up" aspiration and his aspiration bar was all red. The last I'd played him he had been platinum.

I had exited and restarted the game and it would crash after sometime. I couldn't figure out what to do then. After much trial and error, I finally solved the problem when I changed the location of my "My Documents" folder from my Win XP drive to a drive partition which had ample space.

Your computer is better than mine in many ways. Though, I have a 2.81 Ghz processor and I run Windows XP SP2. I've never had any problems with Sims 2 and I can run it on highest settings. The game only lags when there is a lot of snowfall or when there are a lot of customers in the Capp's home business. My downloads folder size is 1.10 GB

Though, I have to admit I have frequent CTDs and often "Error Code 12s" while playing Sims 3 in medium settings.

[Babahara]

Reinstall the game is the best advice, maybe some files got corrupt? Or check the hard drive? I had a problem with missing stuff once, it turned out to be a hard-drive problem, it's very old and sectors were corrupt. Once I installed to another hard drive, the problem was gone.

It isn't true that low-end machines suffer from running TS2, otherwise my PC would be dead long ago. :)

[elinakene]

Just a question/speculation.

Do you have at least 2.5 GB space in the drive partition where you have your "My Documents"? Did you ever get a message, "The Sims 2 may not work properly as you don't have enough space, do you wish to continue anyway" and click "Yes" on it?

I remember a similar problem I had just after installing Apartment Life. When I loaded my neighborhood, many of the houses didn't have the family picture. Tara Kat's family had just "The Family" in the title. In the family description, Sanjay Ramaswami was shown to have "Grow up" aspiration and his aspiration bar was all red. The last I'd played him he had been platinum.

I had exited and restarted the game and it would crash after sometime. I couldn't figure out what to do then. After much trial and error, I finally solved the problem when I changed the location of my "My Documents" folder from my Win XP drive to a drive partition which had ample space.

Your computer is better than mine in many ways. Though, I have a 2.81 Ghz processor and I run Windows XP SP2. I've never had any problems with Sims 2 and I can run it on highest settings. The game only lags when there is a lot of snowfall or when there are a lot of customers in the Capp's home business. My downloads folder size is 1.10 GB

Though, I have to admit I have frequent CTDs and often "Error Code 12s" while playing Sims 3 in medium settings.

If You mean the Local disk(C: ) then I have 370GB free space. I have no idea what to do, I have much older computer(laptop) than my HP, but Sims worked fine, it was a bit more slowly but it worked..

[Babahara]

A small drift:

I wonder who disagreed with low specs not being able to damage your PC. If I told you my PC's specifications, you'd be crying that such PCs are still used. I'm actually ashamed to tell them, that's why I won't. But I can say that it's incomparably worse than the topic starter's specs, and I've never experienced any problems.

[LilGeek]

If I told you my PC's specifications, you'd be crying that such PCs are still used. I'm actually ashamed to tell them, that's why I won't. But I can say that it's incomparably worse than the topic starter's specs, and I've never experienced any problems.

It's also about how you maintain your old system. An old system that's kept dust-free and bug/virus/shit free as well as proper maintenance of the disks can work better than a newer system that's covered in dust and have never seen an anti-virus program or a disc de-fragmentation :)

[Darby]

I was one of the disagree-ers. I failed to notice that in your case, Babahara, it's a PC, but therein lies a hugely fundamental difference. Laptops simply do not (can't) have the same cooling capacity that a PC can. Graphic chip burn-out is largely due to overheating, from what I understand.

So, an underpowered PC can get away with running the game without burning out, if there are enough fans in the case keeping things cool. Not so much, with a laptop with low-end graphics chips that are being asked to do significantly more than they're designed for.

[Sunbee]

Sounds like keeping things cool while playing might help. Sims 3 might be working better for you than Sims 2 because Sims 2 can only see half your processor--you might be able to do some stuff with your OS to help keep other processes off the half Sims 2 is using. What sort of air flow systems have you tried? My laptop's got a fan unit underneath and that sits on a wire mesh elevated two inches above my desk for good air circulation. (One of those paper-holder things flipped upside-down.) I think my graphic chip is much better than yours, though.
Did you follow the part that Darby linked about msconfig? If you've got an out of the box installation of Windows 7 it's probably launching half a dozen things on start-up and running them in the background.