I really need some help - I got the blank icons bug after playing with no issues for about two weeks.
I reinstalled both games this morning, removing all saved games and downloads in the process. I don't even have a downloads folder anymore.
I played fine for about half an hour, then quit. Now when I load the game, it loads the neighbourhoods all fine, but when I choose a family it just sits on the loading screen forever until I'm forced to reboot.
When I tried to play the only family I'd played when it worked, it game up with a box saying the application had crashed.

Any clues on what could have happened? Do I have to reinstall again?

Thanks in advance.

You say you removed all saved games, I think downloads for now are not the issue. Did you put them back on again after re install ? I've only come across something similar when it was Sims 1 and I forgot to put back one of the folders and I had houses that said they'd got people but there were no people just all their stuff. Now I always keep my back up copy till I'm absolutely sure its all OK. I know this is all different but if you didn't put it all back maybe it is getting confused i.e needing data from different places to run properly. Otherwise , Sorry I wouldn't know. Hope you get it fixed soon though.

I'm having a very similar problem. I've been downloading stuff for the sims 2 today and earlier it was playing just fine. Then later it sits on the darn loading screen forever I don't know what to do!

I Too have a similiar problem. My game loads just fine, relatively quickly aswell. I can go to any screen in my game, whatever I want. It just happens that when I go to enter ANY lot, even unoccupied lots, the game goes to load, goes through the entire loading process, back-highlights all the collumns (sp, i know) and just sits there. I have downloaded content, but all of it is EP ready, most of it being skins and recolors. The few things that weren't EP Ready I fixed the integraty with SPe.

same problem here....only have a few hacks..pay bills at box no empty potty and crib sleep thru the night...
can't get any of my houses to load?!

same here. typical EA though, crap

But does anyone have an ANSWEr

Hello!! Again and again and again!! I can't believe it!!!!!!! I spent the whole day trying to load families but....NOTHING happens AGAIN!!! I try to build something, I can't. I try to load a family, I can't!!!! I don't know what else to do. And it was working ok. Please......anybody....... :werd:

Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I definitely don't have an answer! My problem is related in that I can go to all my neighbourhoods, I can load any of my houses, but all the families I've created in the last few days have disappeared! SimPE won't read them either, although if I run the list, they are there, and if I look in the neighbourhood folder, they are there! So I went to an empty neighbourhood, created a family, saved and exited. Then I reloaded and they weren't there either! Again, there files are still in the Neighbourhood folder where they should be!

So I removed the whole Sims2 folder and put it on my other hard drive while I uninstalled and reinstalled University, then put it back without any of the downloaded objects, but left the walls, floors and skins in. The game loaded without any problems, but when I went to any of the houses where my families had lived, the houses were for sale - otherwise they were just as I'd left them, they hadn't reverted to the original houses, and the furniture etc. was still there.

Has anyone got any ideas as to why this should have happened?

ZephyrZodiac

Hey all
I'm a member of the club, same problem. Though I got on an empty lot and could build just fine. Zephyr I think you are a little bit different. Dosen't sound like what the rest of us are experiencing. The one thing the rest of us have in common is the family/lot won't load.
The only lot I can get to load is one that has one person and no house. But it is froze. she doesn't move and time don't pass. I don't have it paused and all Icons are green. I don't know how to fix it. I removed my down loads folder completely and it didn't help. The biggest thing we have in common is we been downloading, both here and everywhere else right? Right! I spent the better part of sunday combing through my game trying to straighten it out. No good still broken. But I noticed a few things along the way. I had stuff in my downloads (2600+, 700MB) that I never downloaded. I know I never downloaded any "new" career tracks. Yet low and behold I found the adult industry and hooker careers in my down loads. How did they get there? My bet would go on houses, I downloaded about 8 houses this weekend. I also downloaded Danny's working girls and service personal pack, but I don't believe dannys stuff is the problem. I think it lies in either a virus packed in a house (not likely though very possible) or a conflict caused by something in a house that doesn't get along with a very popular download or hack. This is where my money goes.
I remember reading something somewhere about not downloading something if you had something else in your game. (maybe it was on danny's site) and if you did it would seriously break your game. Well that comes to mind. I also ran my down loads through SimPE and found quite a few duplcates. Some are just recolors but others are actualy the same thing. buyable car and christmas tree are two of them. I downloaded neither! Again the only way for them to get there are houses.
Unless Someone posts a fix before I get home from work today I am going to start reloading my game and downloads to see if I can get it running right and figure out the problem. If I do figure it out I will be sure to let you all know. But in all honesty lets not hold our breath. - Robar

i have the exact same prob 2! wtf is goin on?? i was well upset wen i lost all me families cos i had sum really gd 1s 2 and thought reinstalling was the only option but still no joy the only way i can play the darn game now is taking every download i have ( i think i had ova 1000) out of the folder! so no cool clothes nemore! grrr hope sum1 finds a solution soon!! xxxxxx

Hi Robar and everyone!

I certainly think you are right that it's something in a downloaded house. I have a situation where adult Romance sims whistle at teens, all sims walk in and out of bathrooms unchallenged, nearly all sims, including teens, strip to get in the hot-tub - I never installed any hack knowingly that would have caused these things to happen!

I think something in a house is causing my problem, a form of not saving - although the house saves, the sims are still in the folder, etc., the game just isn't recognising the save. So I think I shall have to follow your example and reinstall everything! (Which means I lose hundreds of hours of gameplay with my sim, all the sims I've created since I first loaded this game on this pc (I have an earlier version without downloads on another pc, so not everything has gone, thank goodness.) Why oh why do people upload houses which haven't been created in a hack-free environment? I've made loads of houses which I'd love to share, but I won't because they all contain, or have contained hacks. If I decide to share them in the future, I shall recreate them on the other pc! The most annoying thing is that every house I've downloaded has come from a reputable site, yet I've got the buyable cars too, they load in game, I can place them on lots, but they don't actually work!

If there is some way I could scan the whole installation for hacks and patches before I take the radical step of losing this neighbourhood which has about twenty families which I'll lose if I can't reinstall the neighbourhood as is, I would love to hear it.

ZephyrZodiac.

Have you tried going through every thing in your download folder with the clean pack installer. I had the problem of my game hanging and not loading so I went through every file one by one, I took out all the duplicates, all the hacks and all the files that showed no picture. Then for good measure I ran DJSims hack scanner and took out all the ones it recognised as hacks. It worked my game doesn't hang. Took me all weekend to do though

If your problem is that you imported houses with families already in them into your game, and you have no families in them it is the clean pack installer, it doesn't let you import houses with families.

Hope this helps.

Hi Babsjohn!

Thanks for the input. At present, I have taken all my object downloads out of the game - but some still appear there! As far as I know, I haven't imported any games with families in, just unoccupied houses. The most recent house where I've had the problem, I build myself in a new neighbourhood with nothing in it, created a family and moved them in, ran for a while then saved! Exit, reload - family gone! House for sale! (I did at least package this lot before I exited, though, so I haven't actually lost them - I know where they are, even if the game doesn't!)

I shall take your advice, though, and get DJSims hack scanner and see if that helps and I can take all the downloads that still show in game out manually from the build/buy menus. I've tried to find it on the web, but no luck - could you let me have a URL?

Update. Uninstalled Uni, reinstalled (after removing all the downloads I could find) and game then started crashing if I tried to enter a lot (from which, needless to say, the family had gone!). So I uninstalled and reinstalled again after removing my entire EA Games folder from the Documents folder, then loaded the game and entered Pleasantview and loaded an empty house, and no crash! Checked the docs folder, and the game had reinstalled all the original files, checked for any lurking unifiles on my pc, found one in Prefetch and deleted it, but that was all. Since I haven't played in any of the default neighbourhoods since I moved the whole lot onto this PC, I should easily be able to restore these to where they were before installing University, but HOW do I get the user created neighbourhoods back as they were? Should I reinstall university, and then try to reinstall them after checking for any remaining hacks, walls floors etc? If I leave them without the skins and genetics, then the sims I created won't BE the sims I created any more! This whold thing has me totally bamboozled! :confused: :banghead: :weep: :gonemad:

ZephyrZodiac

I can't install the cleaner (**sniff**) but what is this DJSims hack scanner.....
and where can I find it.... :confused: :confused:

Link... please.......

Update: I ended up starting again, uninstalling, deleting everything and reinstalling.

So far it has worked fine, but I still don't understand what happened. I didn't add my backups of my saved games as I think maybe they're corrupted somehow, so I'm starting again. (Lilith and Angela have just gone to college!)

Eventually I'll be brave and add some downloads a couple at a time and see what happens.

I don't know what to advise people though ...

DJS Hack scanner is here AnnieBonnie:
http://www.djssims.com/index2.php

I had the same problem. I could load my neighborhood but once I clicked on a house or lot it would just keep loading and loading. Talk about FRUSTRATION. I read this thread and went and moved all my downloads out. Something in the file caused the glitch. I painstakeningly put back the downloads from all the days prior to the last 2 and got rid of some. I figure it was something I downloaded either yesterday or today that caused the glitch.

I hope Maxis comes out with a patch soon for all these other "bugs." :blah:

Hey Guys!!! Have you tried entering Debug mode (in cheat box type "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true") BEFORE enter a lot? I remember once (granted before Uni) that I entered a lot and after the bars went back down it kept loading and loading. I Ctrl + Alt + Deleted out of it and when I got the game up again, I went into Debug mode. THEN I re-entered the lot. It turns out that one of my new objects was conflicting with another already on the lot, making some tree crash. I had to delete the object before I could enter. TRY THAT BEFORE RE-INSTALLING!!!

Tustin2121

PS. <really small> other than that keep doing what your doing, including all your spazing out... </really small>

A good idea, but how do you enter debug mode?

Hey hot coffee
Did any of those downloads include houses? I had 2600+ downloads = 700 MB never a problem till I started downloading houses on saturday. Now all I have is a broken game. So if it comes to reinstalling I'm going to make sure I get rid of every house and Item I know I didn't download. It's kind of funny cuz my memory stinks, but I can look at a down load and say there is now way in heck I downloaded that!

I haven't tried out this hack scanner but I will. Just so when I reload I can dump all my down loads back in. Not even my desk top short cut works. It says files have been corrupted. I have removed all my downloads and it still don't work. I know the game is broke I just want to figure out what broke it.

If anyone reading this is having these problem and downloaded some houses just before the problem started please post and let us know which ones. Thanks! Good luck Ladies and Gentlemen

Thanx for the link to the hack scanner - I shall try that next! I've just spent about twelve hours going through everything with SimPE - funny how the only objects I had in the game at the time were ones I thought I'd got all the updates for - but I discovered that walls and floors, which a lot of creators tell you aren't affected, WERE affected; the same applied to a lot of genetics, so from now on EVERYTHING goes through SimPE before it goes into the game! When I've used the hack scanner and I'm satisfied everything I've done is ok I shall try reloading University and see whether it all works. Just hoping I don't have to take Sims2 out and start from scratch!

I think the problem with houses not loading, or crashing, is all linked - I had that problem when I first installed Uni, but when I took my downloads out and put them back a bit at a time the problem seemed to be resolved, but obviously it wasn't.......

I actually think the major problem is that when you run SimPE and do the compression check, you can find loads of objects which need to be decompressed. So from now on, I shall not be using diskcleanup to clean up my pc, I shall leave it to WindowWasher, which doesn't go around compressing files!

Shortcatq: Thank you so much for the link. I've already downloaded it and the site is cool, you know.

I came back from work and ...oh God! It's rainning. I wish I could play a little right now. My kids are ready to go to Uni...
How can I enter DEBUG mode... :confused: :confused: I don't know...

HotCoffeAndCake: Elizabeth, your Avatar, you didn't lose her, did you... :confused: I hope not. She's so sweet.

Robar..I did download a church from THIS SITE I believe and it probably was the one that did it. I am a little shy about downloading houses/lots thanks to all the bugs. I now have Installer and Hack scanner waiting to help me should I be stupid enough to download another lot. Hang in there guys!

Sorry, forgot to say how to enter Debug mode, edited my post above... in the cheat box type in "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true". pretty sure it still works in Uni.