No sims appearing on computer chat, as visitors, or in Community Lots?

[Coley-Stars]

I have all the expansions and stuff packs apart from happy holidays. I also have custom content. I've recently been playing and it has been fine; my sim was able to talk to people over the computer and visit community lots to meet people and people came to visit them when they moved in.

However, I've loaded it up after changing NOTHING and all of a sudden I can't speak to anyone over the computer, nothing even loads. When I go to community lots the only people there are people standing behind the tills. And, no one comes to visit when I first move in.

However, I still get newspaper delivery, bill delivery, genie, match maker, the guy who gives me a computer, etc...

Even when I "boolprop testingcheatsenable true" and "shift" on the mailbox and force visitors or walk bys, no one comes. I still have all the original neighbourhoods so there should be sims around. There is no other sims living in my current neighbourhood but like I said, it worked previously and the next day it didn't.

Any ideas?
Last time this happened (before I had all of the expansion packs, etc) I uninstalled EVERYTHING and installed it again; I would rather not do that as it takes time.

[Mootilda]

Uninstalling and reinstalling is rarely the solution to a problem, although it will destroy your CC and save game, so it may look like a solution.

First, do the Game_Help:Game_Problem FAQ. That will help you to determine whether the problem is in your CC, or your save game, or in your installation files. If the problem is with your installation, then you might want to figure out how you're managing to destroy your installation.

[Coley-Stars]

Thanks for replying, it's not the CC as when i uninstalled and installed it didn't delete them as i put them straight back in before i loaded the game. however, i have gone through the game help and it confirmed that CC wasn't the problem. However, before I did anything I checked a preloaded sim in a preloaded neighbourhood and the problem didn't happen but when I made a new, single sim family, and put it in my neighbourhood they also couldn't interact with neighbours because there was no option to. Does this mean there is a problem with the neighbourhood? Like I said, this has happened before, how do I stop it from happening?

Also, in "My Documents" I have two EA GAMES folders, one has all the folders it's supposed to but the second has the "Sims 2" folder inside and nothing else but when I try and delete this it always comes back again after I load the game. This continued happening even when I uninstalled and installed them all again. I use the preloaded save locations and don't make new ones.

Making a new Sims 2 folder to remove user files still didn't get rid of the problem and everything is patched.

The last option they suggest is removing and installing again. But is this going to happen again? :(

[Mootilda]

Until we know what's causing your problem, it's impossible for us to say whether it will occur again. Yes, it sounds like your neighborhood may be corrupted. So, I would suggest that you start by reading this article:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Avoiding_Hood_Corruption

Did you do any of the things which are listed? If so, that could be your problem.

When you let the game regenerate the save game folder, did you play without any Downloads?

The additional EA Games folder could be a known "feature" of Windows 7. Microsoft has decided to duplicate folders on your computer; one folder is private and the other public. You can just ignore the public folder.