Game has been installed on my laptop several times and had a couple of issues now and then but has never had this problem. I re-installed this 2 weeks ago to start playing again and installed everything, including patches and was checking cc etc. all worked perfectly until 2 days ago when I got the random error box with cancel, reset or delete' this was for I think objects or the sim I was trying to load and in the end as it wouldn't reset and I didn't want to mess around and delete I just task manager-ed my way out of it and quit down the sims - then I loaded it up and now in CAS mode and play mode with my sims they do not have any wants or fears at all; just blank, cant hover over and get info etc and on the aspiration selector for say family it is empty it doesn't show any examples

I can go into lots and build and so forth, I haven't really tried to play families or anything to test but I did load up a couple of families which were fine. the original family that I go the error message when loading I deleted in hope it would fix it..

I tried the FAQ on here and have uninstalled and reinstalled the game with the expansions I have and the patches for the expansions - I have loaded the game after without any CC (not on my laptop lurking in a separate folder its stored on another laptop to see if that was the prob) and it is the same issue.. so far no error messages popping up or anything but no wants or aspirations showing

I know I am obviously playing on a different windows to my old laptop where it worked perfectly but even running in compatibility it has not worked... can anyone offer any suggestions or advice please?

Just for info - I have Double Deluxe, Seasons, OFB, Bon Voyage, Freetime and Apartment Life (I think the error came after installing AL which I only installed at the weekend before getting these errors)


Thank so much to anyone able to help!


Edit:- just to add, now been into the game again to see how it is running and now on top of these issues in CAS it will freeze on the family screen when trying to CAS and then when you exit and retry the sim then spins around super quickly. The carpool glitches, 3 kids, 1 gets the bus the other cant and then gets taken by car and doesn't return from school... this is since I updated/reinstalled/removed cc/patched every expansion

Have you deleted sims before? (I'm talking about deleting a whole family, using the "Delete" option on a testingcheats error is fine) That causes corruption which could explain this problem.

It's not really clear from your post - after you reinstalled, did you try playing a completely new neighbourhood that you hadn't played before? Did you have the same problem there?

Thanks for your reply! Sorry I was vague.. it was a single sim family which came up with the box but I didn't click delete on the sim.. I just removed the family from the house the next time I went in and deleted them from the family bin.

I did try going into a brand new made nhood and also the pre-made ones as I didn't back up any of mine just in case that was the problem.. same issue with all families and CAS and blank hoods

Yeah, that's what you shouldn't do - it borks the neighbourhood. As Nysha said, using delete when you get the error message is fine. It's just a temporary delete and removes the instance of whatever is causing the problem off the lot you are playing at that moment only. It sounds like you borked something more important for the game as a whole by exiting the way you did.

Are you trying to use the old user files with this new installation?

oh that's weird, considering in the past (talking years ago when I played first...) I would delete the maxis made ones that I didn't want in the game.. nothing ever happened like this ever
so, deleting the object file from the error message was fine then? I thought perhaps that was what was wrong...

forgive me for sounding really foolish here - but I have no idea what you mean about old user files and new installation... I just uninstalled everything, cleared out files/deleted old downloads etc and then tried to reinstall..
is there another way to do this?
so sorry! never really knew there was a right and wrong way to uninstall/reinstall it; as I said before i have done this so many times on this and old laptops/pcs and never had this issue

No no - that sounds fine. I don't think you're doing anything wrong. What I meant was are you using your old saves - the neighbourhood folders which were in My Documents before you uninstalled? Did you save them and transfer them back into the game when you installed anew?

Thank you for replying to me, no i am not using those at all, i had saved some lots to file and had just tried to put those into my game but that doesn't make a difference as without those it isn't working. I didn't move anything back into the game - i just completely uninstalled and reinstalled and started from fresh and it seemed to be a lot worse with things like the very fast spinning sims in CAS etc.

Is there anything I can try?

Deleting sims from the Family Bin, so that their character data is removed, results in neighborhood-level corruption, because some of that data remains behind, and can attach itself in inappropriate places. For example, the game reuses the ID number of a deleted sim and gives it to a cat, which then has human characteristics. Other signs of neighborhood corruption are born-in-game toddlers with adult wants (if you've aged a toddler down from an adult to seed the adoption pool or something, and didn't change the aspiration to "grow up," it would also get adult wants but not signal corruption), disappearing sims, houses becoming inaccessible, and the neighborhood simply not loading. There's a random element to how the shredded data interacts with the intact data, and it's possible to play a corrupted neighborhood for a long time without any problem arising. All the base game hoods, for example, shipped with corruption, and I have a custom hood I made in 2010 that I know is corrupt, and I'm still playing it (very slowly, as it crashes a lot). On the other hand, you can have corruption render a game unplayable almost immediately.

This could be what happened with your original neighborhood; but it sounds as if your actual game files - the programs that run the game - went bad, and continued to be bad after reinstallation. So, no, don't delete sims with the trash can in neighborhood view, but something more is going on here. Hmmm...I know sometimes the uninstallation isn't thorough and you have to clean things out of the registry yourself. I thought that created problems in the reinstallation phase, though.

Are you running an anti-virus program at the same time as your game? Some of the newer anti-viruses decide that files from old games are potential malware and randomly quarantine them, creating bizarre problems. If that's what's happening, you should be able to look at the quarantined files with the anti-virus's management tool, identify them, and whitelist them. Then try to remember to shut off your anti-virus when you play to prevent it from happening again.

You don't say what operating system you're using on this new machine. Windows 10 has given people problems with arbitrarily marking game data files as "read only," so that would be another thing to check. It's okay to mark your Sims2 Program files as "read only" when you're not deliberately altering them (adding empty templates or whatever), and in fact this is a good safeguard against the worst form of corruption, but data files have to be writeable. This doesn't actually sound like that problem, but it doesn't hurt to check.

Many thanks for your reply to my problem - so thorough too!
I am Windows 10 on my laptop which did play the sims 2 fine when it was on the older windows.. since the update it hasn't played well and that's a bit of a pain so will get my partner to check through this read only thing this weekend (he is SO much better at computers than me!)
Old antivirus and have checked that as that is something we thought of too but doesn't seem to be that...
We will uninstall again and do the registry thing you mentioned - sounds like a good idea to check through and fingers crossed it will work

Thanks again!

never ever delete sims, that corrupted your hood immediately. This also includes deleting graves (they are sims) moving sims between hoods, installing occupied lots.
However this form of corruption is at hood level, which lives in your hood folders under your documents. Nothing to do with your installation files under C drive.
Uninstalling and reinstalling should be your last ever step since firstly it is rare that the problem is in there and secondly the act of doing that can mess up your game by leaving behind files and I would suggest that might be your problem. You may have to get your computer cleaned of left over files and registry keys.

I would suggest you might want to tidy up your very long title to this thread-really doesn't help.

Thanks for your reply... i understand now about this and uninstallation which i did as what i thought was my last resort having looked into hood level errors and such but hind sight is a wonderful thing isn't it?
I was not aware through the years of playing that deleting sims can corrupt the hood immediately which is something i haven't experienced until this point and perhaps stupidly thought 'well there is an option to do it simply in the game so it should be fine..'

Thanks anyway, will look into cleaning computer of left over files and registry keys.. my partner will help with this but if you could give a link or any pointers into ensuring this is done properly i would be most grateful

I know there is one page about that on the wiki help: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Uninstall

EA don't care about game corruption, it was modders and players with programing skills that have educated and helped us with that. I hope you have the essential mod fixes? Especially 'No Corrupt Death' and No Unlink on delete". When you 'delete' a sim it only partly deletes them while leaving bits of stray data to be misread, these spread until you notice glitches and eventually sims or the hood will vanish or not load. For some they can get away with a year or more of play for others it's a week before things blow up. very much Russian roulette.

Nysha, Keri or other technically inclined people should be able to help with that.

Thanks so much everyone, will check out that page and see if I can fix it! fingers crossed and thanks again!

Have uninstalled it and gone through the registry and found a couple of things. Got through to installing DD, OFB then played to check it was working.. all fine so far now tried to install BV (or any others) and says it needs S2 to be installed and isn't.. put DD in and it is going through installation process again despite being on my laptop installed and literally working 5 mins ago..
very strange!
any ideas? sorry... I know this is no longer the original problem

No I would not do that, something isn't right there. I would go get your disks cleaned, your local video shop should do that. If that doesn't work you may need a new disk or you could try getting the UC. personally my personal choice is disks and all separate, no collections or DD. Your DD doesn't have shop addition I hope? I got myself a full second set of disks off ebay a year ago for $100.