First off if this is in the wrong thread.
-OR-
If this question has been asked before...I did do a search but did not find and I am just WAY too lazy to wade through all of the stuff the search did find for me in all the different questions that I thought of asking (did that make sense?).
So, sorry in advanced!!!

:sorry:



I have had the game for a week now and I am ready to just take it back. :swear:

Don't get me wrong I REALLY LOVE THIS GAME :yippee: !

But......

I had played this game when it first came out on a friends PC and had a blast playing it! Would put custom everything that I could find in the game and played the game...yes even hacks! If I had a problem it was easily fixed and if I could not figure it out this forum was and is ALWAYS a great help (THANKS BOYS and GIRLS!! ). But when the Patch came out people were putting the patch in and having major problems...not me...I usually wait to install new patches; I want to see what they messed-up by making a patch...lots in the case of Sims 2!

So I played and played and played and...etc. etc.

Playing, downloading...playing, downloading more...playing, downloading some more...etc. etc....I had thousands and thousands of custom files installed with only a very, very, very few problems...really I could not tell you how many files I had installed....5, 6, 7, 8 maybe 9,000!...Yes it would take a couple of minutes for the game to load, but...NO PROBLEM!!!

Well one day...my friend moved and Sims 2 was no longer available to me...sad, sad, sad...

Now 5 months later I decided to buy my own copy....I know, I know why did I wait soooooooo long? Doom III, HL2, WoW...etc. etc. all came out and I spent all my time on them! But after a while I got tired...kill a bad guy here, a monster there, a head-crab or 2 or 3 or 12 or 60 etc. etc.!

I just wanted to sit back and relax with a Simmy or 2 or 3 or 12 or 60 etc. etc....LOL! Ya right...relax!



SORRY, went off on a rabbit trail I guess...so let me see, where was I...oh yes! :err:

The Problem!

I have had the game now for a week and I am now forced to once again to have to do another reinstall! 2 in four days...that sucks! :swear:

Like most of you The Sims and The Sims 2 are great and fun games...but with making the custom contents is where the game really gets exciting! Making your own and downloading ALL of the great stuff that other people are making the game has endless possibilities! But.....

Some of those things raise havoc with the way the game will run...if at all.

Sorry went off again.....:err:



The Problem!!

I have like most of you run into the problem of the game not loading properly or at all! So we are left with a few options to fix these problems...

Run the "Clean Installer''....which I did....still having the problem.
Take out the last installed downloads....which I did....still having the problem.
Remove the downloads folder from it's proper place and place it where the game will not find it....which I did....still having the problem.
Remove the EA Games folder from it's proper place and place it where the game will not find it....which I did....still having the problem.

So what is left to do? Reinstall? If so...then really do I really want a game that I may have to reinstall every 3 or 4 days.....not really.

Sorry went off again.....:err:



The Problem!!!

After installing some custom files, which btw I have less than 3000 of them installed (doing ALL of the above steps my game still does not load properly).

So I assumed (dang....you do know what assume means don't you? It makes an ASS out of U and ME...LOL! :laugh: )...that when I would load a few custom files and my game would load even to the neighborhood screen that all was fine...WRONG!

I can get to the neighborhood screen with no problem! The game loads great and there is NO sign that there is a problem.

The problem lies when I go to the next loading screen i.e. create a family, build on a lot, play a family...etc. etc. the game just stays on that screen; me being the impatient person that I am 5 minutes was the top time that I waited (and waited and waited and....etc. etc.) NOTHING!!! Finally I would hit those great Microsoft wonder keys "Ctrl, Alt and Delete" (are EA and Microsoft the same company...err...sorry ready to go off again!) and would have to end process.

I did notice that when I would go to the Windows Task Manager that when I would end my Sims2.exe that there was another file that would end at the same time. If I would end that file my Sims game would stop running as well. What is this file; ~e5.0001 do I need it...where is it located?

So please Mr./Mrs. (Miss, Ms.) Wizard I need some help!

I really, really, REALLY love this game :yippee: ...but.......

Reinstall? If so...then really do I really want a game that I may have to reinstall every 3 or 4 days.....not really. Please I do not want to have to take the game back, but I do not want to get frustrated every few days when adding the GREAT stuff...that BTW really is how this game is meant to be played...What are my options?


Sorry for the long windedness of my writing so much...I just needed to add a little humor for a frustrating situation :banghead: !

And...in case I forget (happens when you get older...) where was I...sorry forgot...LOL!.......

......THANK YOU!!! In advanced!!! :bow::bow2:

Thanks!

Maimas

Dang with all of the people that read these forums there is not anyone that can help :argh: :confused:

So here is a :bump:

Maimas

I am not sure why you say you could not find an answer to your problem. You even state that the problem occurs when you start adding custom content. You have a bad download, you need to isolate that download and remove it from the game.

I´m not very good at this technical stuff but i had the same problem as you, that the game would load but when i tried to go into a lot the game would stop responding, I found out this was due to that i had an old version of insimenator installed and a custom career that i missed deleting when i did a search.

Hope this helps you a bit atleast :Pimp:

:howdy:

:howdy:

Sorry not trying to be a smarty pants here or anything, but if you did read my post you would have read:



I did what was suggested here in this thread:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthre...&highlight=Game

So now with EVERY download removed even to the point of the EA Games folder from MY Documents removed and NO downloads whatsoever in my game (or at least that I would know of...is there another place that the downloads would go to?)...I still had the problem. So now I do hope that you understand that it is not that I did not read anything in these treads at this great forums or anything like that for help. I had tried to fix the problem but as of yet there was no solution that worked. :werd:

I did reinstall the game last night though and put all the downloads that Clean Installer cleaned and as of yet there is no problem. But if it does happen again is there anything else that you guys can think of that I may have missed?

BTW I do really, REALLY appreciate the suggestions!!! :bow2:

THANK YOU!!!

Maimas

I'm having the exact same problem as you! I've tried absolutely everything and still my game freezes up loading a lot/family to play. It's ridiculous that the only way (As far as i've heard of/experienced) to fix this problem is to completely remove the game and then have to re-install *grrr*

Maybe you have some background programs running that are using up your CPU resources? (Is that even right? I'm not a technical person by any means). Sometimes when my computer is running at 100% (shows in the CTRL ALT DEL thingy that pops up), my computer won't run at all and I have to reboot the works. I also find that shutting down my firewall stuff and antivirus stuff, etc. makes a huge difference in the way my game runs (I unplug my computer from the 'net too). Just a thought

the "~" should give it away: it's a temporaryly created process (might even be related to copy protection for all I know), thus you would't find it anywhere

When I had problems that I couldn't solve by removing downloads etc I went into SimPE and deleted some 100 memories out of each of my characters memories (mostly all the A+ Spam...3 Kids + 3 Grown ups makes for 18 Memory entries daily plus whatever occasional NPCs collect) that made all the difference in my game
Not sure if that gets you any further...but the idea with cancelling background processes is definitely a good one
If you don't want to shut down you anti vir, at least stop the real time scanning (these files should have been scanned already anyways)

Maimas:

I am not a tech expert either, but I have run into that problem too. I think what happens is some custom hack rewrites a file in the game. Once anything like that has been in your game, it does something to how the game runs. Even after you take everything out, like your downloads and removed hacks, the problem is still there, because it obviously rewrites something so that the game won't load. This happened to me a few times. Just before I got University, I downloaded a few lots from TSR. I didn't know what hacks people were talking about. Anyway, I couldn't install University even after removing the downloads folder. It would end installation when you got to the very end putting disk 4 in, which updates files and installs the patch. The only way I was able to install University was to uninstall and reinstall. I hated to have to do that too, so I know what you mean. I was ready to take back University until I heard about the number of floors allowed cheat. That made it worthwhile for me. The thing you can do is just make sure you thoroughly check for hacks in your new downloads BEFORE installing it in the game. Make sure all objects you want aren't a hack. I don't know if walls and floors could ever be a hack. I downloaded a beautiful island resort lot from this forum and it messed up my whole neighborhood. I tried just like you, clean the files, scanned then, and even removed the downloads folder. The problem was still there. I didn't check for hacks like I should have, just virus scanned, then installed. Well, when NOTHING would load, after I uninstalled then reinstalled, I checked that lot. It had 11 hacks in it. It had the fashion career, alienware computer, you name it. You never know if the house actually uses all the objects that show in the file when you check with clean install. If you take something out that the house actually uses, you might crash. I was taking a chance by taking out objects that weren't hacks and just leaving in the walls & floors in that lot. Anyway, it worked. I was able to clean out everything and just kept the walls and floors. I guess I can go off trail too! Then I installed it back in game. I was actually able to get into that lot then! So, what I am saying here is if you have a custom lot or whatever that you really like, you could still keep it as long as you remove all that junk first. You can't install the custom content, then remove the junk and expect that to fix it, because it evidently doesn't in my experience. I hope I didn't confuse you. Your welcome to email me (website in my sig), pm me here, or just post this thread again. So, make sure you check any new downloads before installing. Once it gets in your game, like I say, it seems to ruin something and no matter what you take out, it won't work.

With 3,000 downloads you probably have a corrupt or hacked object. As some have said this item changes a core game file which is not removed when you take the objects out.

Even Clean Installer could miss a rouge file.....best to limit your objects and try to isolate which file is causing the problem.

I guess that means we have to be really careful with downloading. Hopefully, they will correct or improve this problem with another expansion pack like they usually did in Sims 1.

HouseDesigner2: Thank you so much..that is the one thing i didn't think of! It crossed my mind but I never put 2 and 2 together til now (one of my many blonde moments *laugh*)

Hello everyone :wave:

THANKS everyone for your input:bow2: !!

HouseDesigner2: Thank you so much for that great suggestion! I will try doing that as well :bow2: :bow2:.

What I have been doing is making sure that when I install that I do use Clean Installer when installing the files and taking out the hacks. Also have been using Clean Installer to check my d/l folder to see if there is any duplicates and whatnot. The other thing I did was I did not put the patch in, I will see if that may help as well!

So far so good!! :banana:

Again I want to say thank you for EVERYONE'S suggestions!!!

Maimas

Well People,

I am no tech expert either. BUT I have a feeling that ~e5 file belongs to Internet Explorer. I would lay odds of 10 to 1 that all of you who are experiencing that problem are using MicroSoft internet explorer as their main browser.

The reason why I say that is because I use Netscape and I don't have that file showing up when my game crashes. However, my husband had freshly reformatted his computer and because IE comes with Windows it's the primary browser until/unless you make another one the primary net browser. Anyhow after it was freshly reformatted my son installed his copy of TS2 & Uni on his father's computer and it kept crashing just like the original poster says here. And he found that file.

Since then his father designated Netscape to be the primary browser and now when/if my son's game crashes (because it does - it's a buggy flakier than a piecrust game to start with) that file at least doesn't show up in the system tray.

But if that's your problem try getting and using another browser as your primary browser and you may not have that particular problem. Can't promise you won't have others though cuz I have plenty of my own problems without having that particular problem.

netseeker2

i'm posting my problem here. i don't know where to post a new. well any way i have a problem with a few or more donloads not working in my game. most of the downloads i got are from here. and i had to clean out my folder an start a new. then when i went an got the same stuff that i had before an i pit them in my game now they wont work. it't will be so easy on me to understand if someone would put original for just the sims 2 for people who cant buy the sims2 expansion pack which is the Uniaversaty. sorry cant spell.

sorry put. and for people that do have the expansion pack put Uniaversaty only so that people like me would know what stuff to get and not to get.

ok, i read somewhere that peeps that downloaded lots from the sims2 official sites befor a certain date were getting that problem with the hack items in houses that auto-overwrite the original sims2 items without telling you, so i advised my friends never to dl any houses from there lol....(i mainly was ticked off that they had no way for me to regester my copy without doing the online thingy...Honey *my Sims PC* is not connected to the net like Baby *the online PC i am using now* so i never had the option. sure, im giving my PCs names, but hey, im a bit like that with computers lol. i finaly managed to do a manual register and can now download anything from the sims2 official..i have just dl eveything i want and unless something else in the items section comes out, i may never bother dling from them again ^^ i get eveything from here or parsim :D)

ok, thins might sound daft, but can you also give us the spec and win type of the pc?
i know most peeps are on win 2k or win xp but i am on 98 and have had few if not no probs since i changed mainboards and chip update, but i used to get those ~word thingys on my old sims when it frelled up.
see, it seemed to think i had a *copy*cd in the drive, even when i had a proper bought thing.
i have had that same trouble with Neverwinter Nights, usually after a patch, where thay had done something to the secure-rom stuff *may that software be forever bannished to the nether regions of the net for all the hurt is has caused nice, game buying people that dont be naughty*...the last tine i had problems, i had to turn off both my firewall AND my anti-virus to get the game cd to even run properly
granted, that was just befor i upgraded Baby to an athlon 64 ^^, but it still leaves me with a sick feeling in the pit of my belly to think of what might have gotten into my pc while i had the wall down

thats why i have 2 machines, and my sism is on the offline one. i run neverwinter on the online one and havent updated to DirX9 on that yet, incase something aufull happens to it...i have loads of downloads stored and lots of custom content installed for neverwinter on it and i dont dare have to mess with it lol....

poohjc2002, sounds like you got stuff that had been updated to work with Uni...which means they dont like your game, sorry.
try looking for stuff labled [ts2 only] i have sen one or two of them.
and floors and walls and clothes genetcs ect *should* be ok...just stear clear of anything that says *updated for Uni*, [Ep ready] or University only/requires university
i have noticed a lot of stuff that has been updated lately, so maybe there should be a little area in the downloads section for items that are *Just* for sims2 only owners?

thank you for answeing my problem.

I' may sound mad it's because i am. i'm starting to not like this sight every where i turn this whole sight is going for the expansion pack. and that reall hurks me. i wish i knew how to use the SimPE and the color thing. but i don't. no matter how long i look it over and read on how to do it.

if i knew how to do this stuff maybe i would't have to come to these certian sights as much. [can't spell]