Attention, this problem has been solved, go to solution

Alrighty, so I've been lurking MTS for what seems like a freakin' eternity lol.
I like to believe I know how the Sims games "work", especially 2. Of the games TS2 is my most heavily played and longest running.
I am running all EPs. SPs -

I am experiencing what could be a glitch but its during gameplay as why its in the gameplay category for now but it goes a lil' something like this:

trying to send child sim to school, he’ll go to school for 1 day and thats it. he went autonomously upon moving into the new lot and went autonomously on the previous lot after aging to child.
- no option to walk to school
- no bus arrives at 8a
- no balloon announcing the bus at 7a like normal
- no option to drive him to school
- adults still go to work as normal

things i already tried along with your guys' help since thats my typical go-to if something is awry. but unfortunately, it didnt work for this particular problem hence why im here.
- resetting child sim
- checking the status of the mailbox + garbage can, they’re fine. the car pool still shows up normally so???
- removed any suspected hacks like dresser hacks/maternity clothing hack (not like that should affect this but ya never know with sims)
- ive no school/car pool/bus hacks since theyre unnecessary for my game
- moving them in and out of the lot
- exiting the lot w/o saving
- as far as i know child can use all dressers/closets just fine
- Hack Conflict Detection Utility - but it doesnt seem to run and gives me “Fatal Errors”…not very helpful o_O

i am stumped entirely. his grade hasnt changed either in the time he hasnt gone to school, for 2 days his grade stayed at a B-. when i moved the family to a new lot, he attended school and came home with a B+ but now he wont' go back. its been another 2 days and his grade still stands at a B+. i am so stumped.

i do have squinges mega uni pack but i highly doubt thats a contributor here since ive used it before w/o issues.

if you guys know any sort of thing thats going on, id love any sort of help or guidance in correcting this. kid has got to go to school yo!

Have you tried removing ALL of your CC, to establish whether or not it IS CC-related? (Which it probably is).

Also, are you using the Ultimate Collection? If you are, you need to make a folder in the EA Games folder (in Documents) called The Sims 2, rather than The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection and move your downloads folder into it temporarily. That's the path HCDU uses.

I am going to try removing my CC folder entirely since it was like, 5a when I was messing with all this and just about had it.

Thank you for the information about HCDU, I'm seriously hoping it helps, I've heard good things about it. I will report back here with results after work. Fingers crossed - this is a ridic glitch and I've seen some ridic things in my simming life. D:

Nah, I thought I had that mod but it turns out I failed to download it, and I will make sure I don't.
I will remove the entire folder today after work, I can't possibly stay up til 5a another night. I have got to get this sucker resolved!

It is a child and not a teen, yes?

Correct. I've no teens currently on the lot though I will be testing with both child and teen after work and will report back.

Wait! Before you go to remove your downloads, do you have any that create NPCs? Don't remove those! (See here for particulars: https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=496887)

Also, don't forget to make a backup of your neighborhoods as they are before you start pulling cc.

D: I've none, this hood was 100% empty and devoid of life anywhere when I started! I actually made my own after installing no-spawn redundancy i-forget-their-names mods and such so I'd be able to do so, but none of them are children. All the townies I made are adults.

The hood checker! OMG I'll run the hood checker today as well since I totally forgot it exists!

I currently have 3 backups I did manually and 1 via simpe, so a total in 4 backups because I'm so paranoid about TS2 and TS3 for obvious reasons lol.

Edit: What the heck am I looking for with the hood checker??? When I run it later, Idk what it's going to spit out at me, it's been an incredibly long time since I'd even used that utility.

OK somethings I tried today:

- Ran pleasantview > broke family: Dustin went to school day 1 no problem. Day 2 he did not. Got the balloon for the bus this time [unlike previous] but no bus appeared, also no option to walk to school.
I've not played PV since reinstalling TS2. I've been on and off with TS2 since TS3 came out so I keep the 'hoods I've been playing backed up, except the 'hoods that ship so essentially this hood is clean and untouched. Exited the lot w/o saving
- Ran my test hood which is entirely empty [no subhoods are attached either] aside from 2 lots I use for CC display for downloads which are currently both empty of anything, even sims. > Ottomas family since there is both a teen and child present: Day 1 and Day 2 both had the bus balloons promptly at 7a and the bus arrived at 8a like it was supposed to. Both the teen and child arrived home when scheduled. Exited lot w/o saving as well [I don't want corruptions in that 'hood...or any lets be real.]
- Ran the hood I'm trying to play in, setup lot > ottomas family again because of the teen and child: Both went to school on day 1, arrived home when scheduled, did not return for the 2nd day at all. No balloon at 7a announcing the bus, no bus at 8a or option to walk/be driven.
- Ran PlasticBoxs' Portal Revealer mod to see if possibly a portal was indeed blocked, my suspicion was correct as all my portals are ok.

I am now running w/o my hacks entirely to see what will happen.

I did run the HCDU and it came up with possible conflicts that are my simblender, ACR, visitor controller and college adjuster which are my BIG ones. The remaining 6 were things like "vampires walk normal", "no stray visitors", "don't harass the baby" and things of the misc nature. I failed to run the hood checker because Idk what I'm supposed to look for, I've been told in the past it can be a little rough around the edges since TS2 is rather broken anyways.

Since you have 4 backups of this hood then after you select the hood you want to check with HCDU there is a remove button next to the check button and that is what you want to use.

On it right now! Thank you!! Will report back with results!

All of the hacks mentioned so far are in themselves good hacks, such as harder grades. Hacks can though clash with each other, but that doesn't make them bad per say so please don't think harder grades or simblender etc are somehow bad mods. I use both no worries. Sometimes it's as simple as load order creating trouble.

Do make sure when you remove 'all' cc that you leave a Super Hug fix in such as no sim loaded and don't remove any mods that create NPC's.

Oh no no, I swear up and down by Simblender, Visitor Controller and Uni mega pack - Idk what I'd do w/o them honestly.

I dont have any mods that create NPCs, just ones that prevent entirely. Running game now to see what the verdict is, hopefully I can start my 50/50 process.

OK! So I've narrowed it down to one of these mods:

- BO - Bottomless Bottle [Prob not]
- Buyable Maxis Maternity Clothes [Prob not]
- GLOBAL MOD - Enable 'Rent Furnished Apartment' [dk why I even have this mod because you can rent furnished w/o it pretty easily]
- Homework Sometimes [POSSIBLE and I overlooked it thinking I didn't have any regular school-related mods other than uni mega pack]
- Maxis Adults Clothes for A YA & E (NL-OFB)
- Moo_TurnOffLights/TurnOnLights [I highly doubt its these]
- No Welfare [POSSIBLE???]
- School Bus Bring Friend Dialog [POSSIBLE, didn't know I had this one either, wth]
- Smonaff_VampiresWalkNormal [Prob not]
- SlideDownStairRailingEnabled [Prob not]

and those are the ones I took out to clean up and remove out of suspicion.

What do you guy think? Game is ok now, all kids in all hoods can go to/return from school as normal again.

I use most of those no worries.

I don't use:
Slide down stairs
vampires walk normal
No welfare (what is that one?)
School bus bring friend (I think it came with another feature I did not want because I do remember looking at it a couple of times)
Also don't use BO bottle since I use a different one that's a sippy cup. All BO's mods are well made though as is anything by Mootilda. Pesacdo while making good mods is also known to include hidden features so do be careful with anything of his that isn't a game saving fix.

Since school bus bring a friend is related to school it could be clashing with some other school related mod.

The "No welfare" is from simlogical and it prevents the social worker from taking your kids suffering low grades and/or children left on lot w/o an adult. I removed it because of the grades thing as I'm now paranoid about any children/school mods that arent in the uni mega pack.

Compatiblity Note: The school bus/bring friend mod is compatible with the Inteenimator, but is not compatible with the 'back to school' flavor pack add-on.
AL Version Only Compatibility Note: Pescado's alfixes conflicts with school bus/bring friend and my mod must load after alfixes to work.

Reading through I know I didn't get it as I use homework sometimes. You need to be careful not to use mods that are modding the same code. I also use Squinges Uni pack. For the SW I use a Pescado mod for a saner SW.

Alfixes clashes with the Simlogical school if you have that at all, I removed al fixes. It wasn't fixing anything that I needed fixing. Just clashed with the school and stopped date cards.

@ gh0stic
I have No Welfare and Homework Sometimes, and I've never had a problem with children not being able to go to school. However, my hacks are different than yours and some that I have that work fine could conflict with something that you have.

That said, many conflicts can be resolved by changing load order. You could try renaming all those files so that they have a "z" as the first letter of the file name. That will mean that they will all load after anything else in your folder. You could try that, see if it works with all of them restored in your game. If so, you'd have all of the functionality of those mods without causing conflict and errors.

THAT said, some mods just fatally conflict with others no matter what you do. In such cases, you have to make a choice as to what you want more because you'll never be able to have both.

I should mention I am not an inteen user - I know its popular but I just havent quite gotten around to it and I know there's a lot of hacks that do indeed fatally conflict with it so I just steer clear of it to avoid the hassle.

I hope I can at least return No Welfare mod, that is useful cause I dont particularly like having a Nanny on my lot...They just make a mess a lot and just get in the way ultimately.

Ider what the "homework sometimes" hack is in all honesty. I think it was downloaded some time ago [like years]. I cant seem to find the origin of the hack to look it up.

Homework sometimes is from here: http://modthesims.info/d/32302

Make sure you are using the correct version of all your hacks too. Hacks like homework sometimes have more than one version.

Hmm. Ok back to square one.

Now just the teens won't go to school. What the heck Sims 2. What. The. Heck.

You are going to have to keep adding a hack back in until you hit on whats causing it.

Yep. On it right now! Will post back with results again! Wish me luck D:

Holy crap. You guys...
I found a pattern...

Bear with me a moment:
I play nothern hemisphere weather: Winter/Spring/Summer/Autumn, right?
Well, that means when I enter a lot for the 1st time it's set to winter. Now all my test lots...are on winter...
Because they are test lots I have a sim manually change the season to summer [3rd quadrant] so they dont get snow/freezing with the buyable aspiration rewards object before doing anything so they arent crying about it while setting up/testing things. On said lots the children/teens were going to school because summer enact in that 3rd quadrant...

I got to the lot I'm trying to actually have gameplay on and its set to spring in the 2nd quadrant. He isnt going to school at all STILL but the other lots are fine, so I'm stumped again right?

Well I made some dang ol' tea and took a step back...
Did the same things on the gameplay lot as I was doing on the test lots...set the season to summer in that 3rd quadrant...VOILA, HE WENT TO SCHOOL NOT ONCE BUT TWICE. HIS GRADES ARE IMPROVING AND IM BEATING MY HEAD ON A WALL.

Turns out, Phaenoh's summer vaca mod only affects the 2nd quadrant and does her northern hemisphere seasons a bit differently than I do...in the past 26 years of my life in Chicagoland...we usually always start the year in winter but yanno, details.

SO I exited the lot w/o saving and threw my seasons to match her pattern so the summer vacation lined up properly in that 2nd quadrant so now my seasons are Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter and all is well again.

We did all that...for nothing. Turns out nothing was actually wrong...I'm going to lay down for a while now...
Please mark this thread as solved, hopefully others can benefit from this if they're using seasonal mods like myself.

Say for example you play like I do with her mod installed, your seasons are:
winter, spring, summer, autumn -
With her mod you'll have a spring vacation INSTEAD of summer because hers is coded to have said vaca for the season in the 2nd quadrant.

If your seasons are: autumn, winter, spring, spring -
Your vacation would be winter vacation because its the 2nd season in rotation.

lol..I was waiting to reply thinking, I must read the whole thread before I do..first thing i thought was..Do you have Phaenoh's summer vacation mod ?
I do. And I love it!